My Social Media-less Life

Last week, the Lord stopped me as I was wandering around aimlessly in my house and asked me a simple question: “What are you so afraid of?”

And I knew what He meant, because I’ve been ignoring the Lord on this particular subject for at least 3 months.

“What is that subject, Erica?” Funny you should ask, because that’s what I’m here to talk about. The subject is surrender.

If you’ve been following this blog for longer than 5 minutes, you might recall the extreme overhaul I made of my room back in August and September and how open the Lord and I have been about what I can and cannot keep in my room.

“Is that not a form of surrender?” Yes, yes it is.

In fact, that was part of the reason why I had done the best kind of ignoring I could over the past few months. The Lord and I would be talking and all of a sudden He would start to point out a part of my life I needed to change and I would just as suddenly play deaf.

Last week, about this time, the Lord finally stopped me in that, I couldn’t breathe, move or function on my own anymore… and that sounds weird, but… that’s really what it was like. So I picked up my journal and I started writing in answer to His question, “What are you so afraid of?”

That’s where it started. And I wrote for about 20 minutes. There’s another blogger I follow and she talks about how journaling her thoughts has really helped her with healing in her life, and I always knew that to be the case, but last week, I really felt it.

I began by writing about what I’m afraid of, and ultimately the answer boils down to is that, I DON’T KNOW WHAT A TOTALLY SURRENDERED ERICA LOOKS LIKE.

And the fact that I should have always been so surrendered that this isn’t even something we should be talking about was the most crushing thought of them all. So I wrote about that.

Do you want to know what the Lord told me? Well, first of all, He told me I had to wait a week to write, which is why I’m writing this now.

The next thing He told me was that I needed to go to bed earlier so I can get up earlier.

Wait… what?

To say I was a little confused would be a HUGE understatement.

Of course, He elaborated. Basically, He wanted to do a total overhaul of my life, and it started that very night.

“I gave you all the tools you need to be successful. You just need to use them.” Well, alright then.

So the new schedule started at bedtime. I told a couple of my friends and they joked, “Of course the Jewish God would start your day at the end of the day like the Jewish people do!” And it was comical the first few days…

By day 4, I was also sore and nearly regretting everything in my life. On top of getting up early, I was now to use that early morning time for working out, reading the Bible and journaling. So far, the only thing I’ve done consistently is workout, but the Lord told me today, “As long as you’re getting up earlier and thinking about Me, that’s the best start.”

And then He told me something I’m going to share with you: Surrender doesn’t have to start with you being all in. If you’re willing to give up one thing at a time, the Lord will work with that. Until it’s time to work on the next thing.

As humans, we have a tendency to be all in or all out. And if we’re somewhere in between, we feel even worse about ourselves. The Lord will work with us just like we need to work with ourselves. Big changes don’t happen overnight; the Lord just wants people who are willing to surrender and move closer to Him. Even if that’s just one or two spaces at a time.

Because if we move one or two spaces on the board of life, eventually we’re going to look back and see how far we’ve come. And we won’t be the same people we were before.

Pick one thing the Lord is really telling you to change, and change that one thing. Take it day by day. He is the God of right now, and He’ll be there with you, even in that small change.