Reflections of Week 3, Beautifully Surrendered
Beautifully Surrendered, God’s Heart for His Daughters is a Love God Greatly Study
As we read about Hannah, Anna, Rachel, Hagar, and The Woman at the Well this week we learned the need to stay surrendered to God in prayer. Prayer is the act of seeking God, and as Hanna learned, it requires that we keep our eyes on Him and not the people or situations of our lives. Continual prayer, as we saw in Anna, keeps our cares in God’s hands and not our own. Because Anna lived this way and wasn’t caught up with the cares of the world she was acutely aware when she was in the presence of the Long awaited Messiah and she was free to make Him known to others. While we heard Rachel call out to her husband for a child rather than God, we see that God still took notice of her and became the “hero of the story” for Rachel – who acknowledged with “Joseph”, the name of her firstborn, that she knew exactly who was responsible for making her a mother. When we see God work on our behalf it strengthens or perhaps awakens our belief in Him. Through Hagar we witnessed the beauty of knowing God sees us and how it plays such a vital part in our prayer life with Him as it gives us hope and strength and peace in our journey. Finally, it was was the woman at the well that reminded us to keep our eyes, not on our past(regrets or shame) but on what Jesus can do, has done, and will do for us who believe.
Living like this doesn’t mean we will not face struggles in our lives but rather that when we do we will pour out our souls to Him rather than live in anger, resentment, doubt, fear, shame, self-centeredness, or disbelief. Making our lives a lifestyle of prayer will lead us to the perfect peace as both Isaiah and Paul talked about in their writings when they said:
You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in You, all whose thoughts are fixed on You.
Isaiah 26:3
Don’t be worried about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for what He’s already done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 4:6-7
If you missed any of this week’s devotions from me you’ll find them at this link
If you missed any of the Love God Greatly Blogs for week 3 you’ll find them at these links:
https://lovegodgreatly.com/asking-for-the-impossible/