One of the quiet realities of the Christian life is that temptation does not disappear with time. It does not matter whether you have walked with the Lord for five months or fifty years. The enemy still knows how to place shiny distractions in front of us. He offers new opportunities, new environments, and new promises that seem cleaner and easier than the path God has already set before us. And if we are honest, our hearts often respond by trying to control things. We start adjusting our circumstances, protecting what we think we have earned, and maneuvering situations so that we feel secure.
Yet the truth is that much of what we hold onto so tightly was never ours to control in the first place. Life has a way of shaking what we think is solid, and those moments reveal whether our trust is really in our own strength or in God’s faithful hands. The invitation of faith is simple but difficult: let go. Surrender. Trust that the God who brought you this far is able to carry you further still.
Scripture gives us a powerful picture of this kind of trust in the life of the prophet Jeremiah. By every earthly measure, Jeremiah had reason to give up. He had been mocked, beaten, and humiliated for speaking God’s truth. Yet in the middle of that hardship, God asked him to do something that seemed almost absurd—to invest, to buy land, and to believe that God still had a future for His people.
Jeremiah had a choice. He could run from the calling, or he could trust the Lord’s plan, even when it made little sense. In that moment he declared, “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”
That kind of surrender has marked the lives of many faithful believers throughout history. When William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, was once asked the secret of his influence, he simply said that God had all there was of him. That is the heart of the Christian life. When we stop striving to control everything and instead place our lives fully in God’s hands, our vision becomes clearer and our purpose steadier. We were made for that kind of surrender, and through it God can lead us further than we ever imagined.
In Christ,
James
Rev. James A. Williams
Senior Pastor
Grace Resurrection Methodist Church