Surrender

Is it just me, or does anyone else ever SEE themselves in the characters of the Bible?

Though I desire to be most like Jesus, I relate best to Sarah and Abraham.

Like them, I’ve laughed in my doubting and even jumped ahead of God’s timing — taking matters into my own hands when I should’ve trusted the faithfulness of God.

Like Sarah, I understand the despair of barrenness. My heart, like hers, has longed for a child, and I’ve grown weary in waiting — becoming disheartened at times, even when I’ve always had God’s good and precious promises.

Like Abraham, there’ve been times my faith has been tested, and I’ve been called to surrender.

One such time was in 1999. Jacob, our second born, entered the world in San Diego. His birth mom Michelle and I had been communicating by phone from March of that year until his birth in August. Never had she wavered or expressed doubt about her decision to place him with us.

Still, no woman can fully comprehend the emotions she’ll experience until she physically holds her child in her arms.

Michelle felt love.

Several days after Jacob’s birth, we received the call that every adoptive couple dreads.

“I can’t do this.”

There was really nothing we could do. Jacob wasn’t legally ours, though he’d become our son over months of waiting, dreaming and planning. And as I held him those first few days, God had only confirmed His promises to me regarding this child.

Still, on August 20th, 1999, we had to surrender Jacob to an unknown future — to literally lay him down and walk away.

And yet, in the hours that followed, God spoke so tenderly to my heart — reminding me of Abraham’s surrender. Would I, like him, trust my faithful Father?

Corrie Ten Boom said, “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess.”

God gave Jacob back and has used this testimony to deepen not only my faith, but also the faith of his biological mother, as well as others’.

But surrender is always difficult.

What is God calling you to surrender?
Do you trust that ‘The Lord Will Provide’ (Gen. 22:14) all that you need?