Recently, I’ve been trying to submit ALL of myself to Jesus. Places that maybe I’m harboring for myself and don’t know it, or things that I’ve been holding back from Him….I just have really felt a pull to Him lately, and want no separation between Him and myself. So I’ve been inviting Him into my heart a little more deeply lately, asking Him to shed light into all those dark corners.

Sounds straightforward, right? Not exactly. See, there are certain traits I have that I don’t like too much – we all have them. Nobody’s perfect. So I’ve been submitting them to God just in case there was sin at the heart of it. I’m a procrastinator; does that come from laziness? Does it come from pride – thinking my time is more valuable than others’? Sometimes I can be a great organizer, but I can also be afraid to take action sometimes. Is that laziness? Am I completely failing to posses any of the productive qualities I see in Proverbs 31?

So I’m sitting there on the phone with my prayer partner, repenting my complete selfishness and horribleness as a person, and she prayed through it with me, and said “I don’t think you’re at the root of it yet.” So she prayed for discernment for me, and I just let God in.

As it happens, she was right. God had more to reveal. As a child, I was expected to appear perfect, and failure was not an option at all. Even ‘failures’ that are necessary to be learning experiences. I haven’t thought about that for years, but that fear of failure became the root of a lot of my less desirable qualities that I have today. In letting Him in and submitting that fear, not only are those related traits lessening, but my heart is finding an incredible level of peace the more I let God in to work on it.

This is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, what you’ve experienced, who you’ve become. He can make you anew. He can make you whole. He can get to the root of the dark places we harbor in our hearts, and remove the weeds completely. He can take bad qualities and replace them with good. He can take fear and replace it with peace. He is our Provider on a deeper level than we can possibly know.

Speaking of giving peace, I have a side note: Tomorrow is suicide awareness day. Take some time to think of the people you know in your life who may be struggling, and say a prayer for them. Pray for peace of mind and heart for all those struggling to find their worth and their reason for existence, and pray that instead of losing this battle, that these dark times would serve to reveal God to them. Pray for readiness to be a vessel of God’s light, love, peace, and hope wherever He may need you to be.

God bless!

~Rebekah  A