Life is a journey: God and us
Sometimes it’s a smooth glide
Some others, it’s a rough ride
Sometimes, we are confident
Some others we feel incompetent
But every day we are learning
By obedience, we are growing:
Into the fullness of His calling
Unto the stature of His glory.

It’s only the second week of the first month in the new year and some of us are already breathing hard and wondering what next. We are learning new steps in the new path of life to which we are called to walk with God. Sometimes it will feel like we got a good idea of where God is leading us until we get to some pathways and wonder if we really got enough details of where we are headed. “Wait a minute, where are we going? I thought I knew for sure…?”

Truth is: many of us may not understand the path we have to travel in the new year because it’s all new to us. We may get confused trying to figure out how to navigate the complicated patterns and routes stretching out before our eyes. All that is going wrong in the world today may prod us to fear and doubt the capability of the One who has called us out this way. We may not know which way to go and what next to do. Yet I learned, that at every point where we don’t know, we can always do one thing or the other: give up and settle or surrender to the Guide that knows the way we don’t.

We can give up and choose to go no further, “After all I don’t know where and when all this is going to end.” Yet, despite the complex network of paths stretching before our eyes, despite the panic threatening to go off in our minds, despite the temptation to pause and worry ourselves to death, and despite the screaming questions about which way is the best of all these, the choice is always ours: to give up and settle or give up in surrender.

Surrender is another kind of giving up. Unlike giving up on ourselves and on the journey, to settle where we are, this kind of giving up is an active hand over to God, of all we have no idea of how to deal with. It is handing over everything we know or don’t know to the God who knows it all. It is an act of trust that is demonstrated by obedience to the God who keeps us going, even if nothing makes sense, even if we don’t know where and how it will all end.

Surrender is inspired by the knowledge that we are not alone and not on our own as many people may conclude. We may not know our way on this path we’ve never been before, but through surrender, we acknowledge that we do have a Guide who knows the way we don’t. In fact, He is the Way. Sincere surrender steers us to turn over our cares and concerns to the One that Knows. To yield our all to Him who cares for us. It is not a one-time-does-it-all exercise. Surrender has to be intentional and it has to be continuous: a choice we have to make every day, at every point where we are confused or conflicted.

As you go deeper into the New Year, my prayer is that you will learn to let go of all you don’t know and trust the God who knows it all. That whenever you get to those junctions where you don’t know what to do, that you will choose to be still and know the only thing you cannot un-know: that He is God. That God is good. That God is faithful. That God can be trusted. And from that place of knowing: may you take one step of faith at a time, confident that He orders the steps of the righteous, that He will not let us fall, that faithful is He who started this, who also will complete it. From that one step at a time, may you continue to move forward with God in the New Year until you can eventually look back and realize how far those little steps of faith have carried you.

Blessings
Glory!