Now, let’s talk about your heart for a minute.

You are doing it.  You are waking up each day putting one foot in front of the other and making it happen.  Good on you!
 
Now, let’s talk about your heart for a minute.  While we are all waking up in the morning and laying down at night, how is the condition of our heart throughout the day?  It’s one thing to tackle a day and a totally other thing to embrace it.   Tackling requires determination and force, embracing requires acceptance and surrender.
 
I’ve talked to a lot of people who are tackling this season:  powering through with gripes and grumbles, holding on by a thread, falling back on old vices.  I’ve talked to very few who are embracing it, gracefully surrendering, and saying no matter what God is good so my day will be too.  I fall somewhere in the middle (though I’d love to say I am perfectly surrendering).
 
Friends, it is only in surrender that we find peace.  But what are we surrendering to?  A pandemic?  New schedules?  Lost jobs?  No in person schooling?  Yes, and no.  Yes, because this is what God has for us in this season or He wouldn’t allow it.  I know your heart wants to push back on that.  I didn’t say God caused it.  I said He allowed it.  The Bible is full of bad situations God allowed but used for good.  No, because we are not surrendering to a temporary situation but rather to a God that we trust.  We are abandoning ourselves entirely to a God that knows better than we do.  Surrender requires humility and recognition of our mortality.
 
Surrender your heart to God, turn to him in prayer, and give up your sins— even those you do in secret.  Then you won’t be ashamed; you will be confident and fearless.  Job 11:13-15
 
I wonder if some of us have “secret sins”?  I wonder if our secret sin is the condition of our heart.  We keep the smile, do the right things in public, post all the pretty pictures and Bible verses on social media, but behind closed doors we are cursing the situation we are in.  Worse, we are cursing our brothers and sisters made in the image of God because of how they are handling things.  We have created a false confidence because we are afraid, pride.
 
Job 11:15 promises that when you surrender your heart to God “you won’t be ashamed; you will be confident and fearless”.  This is not a prideful false confidence that tackles each day with the appearance of fearlessness.  It is the fruit of surrender, it is peace.  It is what makes people ask, “how are you so calm and happy right now with all we are facing?”  It looks a lot like hope.  It looks a lot like light in a dark world, and isn’t that what we are called to be?
 
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.  Hebrews 10:22-23

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