Serving God and letting go of control.....

One of the hardest things that God has been teaching me lately is letting go. Letting go of my control, letting go of my worry, letting go of everything that I've been holding on to so tightly. I try to plan, I try to calculate and in the end, I try to direct my own path. I'm not trusting that God will pull through and be

there in the end.

In the last few days, God has been gently trying to tell me to open up my hands and give it to Him. He has amazing dreams and plans for us, but we can't accept His until we let go of our's.

I'm reading a great book called 'The Art of Being' by Constance Rhodes. In a chapter by Jill Phillips, she talks about letting go of control:

It talks about God's Will for our lives. We're all trying so hard to figure out God's Will that we forget that it's actually a journey, a marathon instead of a sprint. So Jill passes on the wise words of her friend, "God's will is that He be glorified."

So no matter waht we're doing, we can be bringing glory to God. God does speak very specifically into our lives, but sometimes we have to be willing to see that God doesn't always give us a 5-year plan. He's more into letting us trust and see. Because if God really did give us our 5-year plan, there wouldn't be much room left to trust.We have to be willing to let go of our security and follow God on the great adventure that He has planned for us.

I was reading in my Bible, and God showed me a verse that went along with this:

1 Peter 2:16, "Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as Servants of God."

Mostly the last little line, Living as servants of God. The Greek word for Servant is Du-los, which means "devoted to another to the disregard of one's own interest." Am I that devoted to God? I guess that's what it really means when it says we have to die to self. To be completely devoted to Jesus and disregard our own control and comfort zones to follow Him. If you go even deeper into the root of the word Du-los, it is de'-o. Meaning "to bind, tie, fasten". We are to bind ourselves to Jesus. To fasten our faith, our hope in Him. Our control. That is what it means to be a servant of Christ.

God is gently calling me to step out of my boat and onto the water. To be a servant of God.