DAY 19 Surrender

BE STILL Spend 2 minutes in stillness and silence with God

SCRIPTURE 1 The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; 2 for He founded it on the seas and established it on the waters. Psalm 24:1-2

DEVOTION

Copyright laws protect a person's proprietary information and ensure that they have complete control over their work or ideas. The person or organization can also grant temporary use rights of their work to others. When granting those use rights, the original owner typically gives specific instructions on how their work can be used.

Let's think of our favorite musical artists – when they use samples from another artist’s song, they need permission first. They are only allowed to use the sample length they pay for, and they are legally obligated to use the sample solely in the manner they have been given permission. Imagine that stewardship operates in the same way.

Take a moment and read today's scripture two more times. God created this world and everything in it is His! A major part of stewardship takes us remembering and living by this truth. Whether it be tangible items like people, resources, and money or intangible things like time – God has His fingerprints on it all. When we keep this truth in mind, we can then walk in the first component of stewardship: surrender.

Surrender looks like recognizing we aren’t the original creator of people, time, money, our gifts, and so forth. God owns those copyrights. Jesus mediated a contract that gave us use rights for God’s creations, and thankfully, these rights don’t have an expiration date! God’s word and other methods of communication (Holy Spirit, dreams, prayer, etc.) give us instructions on how we are to use what He has created.

Surrender also looks like willingly exchanging how we want to interact with these things for how God wants us to interact with them.

Surrender may start with asking the questions:

· What has God placed in my hands?

· How do I interact with this thing?

· How does God desire for me to interact with this thing?

Let's look at an example using time. God controls time, but we control how we interact with it. Our management of time has been placed in our hands. To answer the second question, we may interact with time by spending most of it on Netflix, with friends, working, creating, and the like. Lastly, as we study scripture we may discover that some ways God wants us to spend our time are resting, serving, and hanging with Him.

We can begin seeing how well we are stewarding a thing by examining how our answers to the three questions above align. For some of us, surrender involves our intentionality in aligning what He wants with how we live. For others, we are already aligned but may need to adjust our quantity of engagement.

Let's put this in context using our time: Example, hanging out with friends, watching Netflix, working, etc. are all in alignment with God’s desires for us to be in community, rest, and use our gifts. However, too much or too little of any of these things is what can throw us off.

No matter where you are on your surrender and stewardship journey, remember that this is a process! It doesn't involve our outward behaviors changing first, but our hearts shifting first. As a result, our actions and interactions with what God has given us will then change. Be patient, kind, and loving with yourself on this journey!

Is there a particular area of your life that you need to surrender to God in order to be a better steward?

PRAY IT OUT

Every good and perfect gift comes from you, God! Thank You for the gifts You have given me to serve others. Thank You for the finances, relationships, shelter, food, and time that You have made me a steward of. I also thank You for [get personal about what God has placed in your hands to steward]. Everything in the world is Yours, and You did not have to give me what You have!

You have given Your word to teach, reprove, correct, and train me in how to steward Your way. Holy Spirit, speak to me about anything that I have not been stewarding well in my life. I will not quench You. Lord, You have never forsaken those who seek You. Help me to surrender how I want to steward and exchange it for what Your word says about this thing. Specifically, please help me to steward [anything you’re struggling to steward well] according to Your will. In Jesus’ name, Amen.