The Four Things God Taught Me About Submission When Launching This Blog
We can’t put our weaknesses and insecurities above what God can do.
I have been so scared to launch this blog, that I told all my friends I would do it just so I wouldn’t back out.
I felt God calling to write and to be public with my writing. I’ve always loved learning and have gained wisdom from various blogs and podcasts. But when it comes to me fulfilling that role I keep getting caught up on the question of, “Who am I to do that?” I often feel like I have nothing to offer. But I’ve come to realize – that’s the point. It’s not about me. It’s about being obedient to God’s call.
Just the act of writing this first blog post helped me learn about submitting to God’s call. Maybe you can relate. Sometimes the Lord’s call can seem daunting or just too intimidating or inconvenient to obey. So here, in my first blog post, I’ve summarized four lessons I’ve learned about submission in the process of launching my blog.
Lesson one: It’s not about me
I was talking on the phone with a mentor of mine, Christian speaker and author, Alli Worthington, and I was telling her how I didn’t feel confident enough to start writing my own blog. I didn’t want to seem like a flashy know-it-all. But, at the same time, I felt God leading me to do it. “Kat, being disobedient is not humble,” Alli said to me.
That knocked me back, but I nodded along in agreement. I’ve been preaching to myself a lot lately that it’s not about me. Yet, there I sat on the phone as a complete hypocrite, making it about myself, terrified to publicize a gift that the Lord gave me a long time ago. But it’s never even been about me…why do I keep worrying over something that isn’t for me? It’s a matter of letting go. Completely. Our gifts are given to us simply for His glory. God doesn’t call us to produce results, He calls us to obedience. So, why do I keep walking in circles around my call, pondering how I’m going to accomplish it? Time to go right to it.
Lesson two: We don’t have anything to offer. But God does.
We often fall into a pit that we have dug for ourselves. In this pit, we believe lies like we have nothing to offer, and it’s best to just keep quiet. For me, I believed that it was best to just keep writing and journaling privately. No one would care anyway…right? That’s exactly where the enemy wants to put us: into a place where we can’t fight.
I’ve discovered that life is a battle; an everyday battle where we have the freedom to wake up every morning and choose to fight back. We also get to choose whether we’re going to fight alone or fight with Him. The enemy has no power the moment that we say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” The battle is His…all of it. I get so caught up in the little things, and I forget so often that He wants to be victorious over those things, too. The little things add up and become a bigger problem than they were ever intended to be. We dig ourselves into a pit that we didn’t realize we were digging until we are right at the very bottom of it. No way to get out. I’ve found myself at the bottom of that pit far too many times.
We can’t put our weaknesses and insecurities above what God can do. We can fixate on them so intently that we dig ourselves into a hole and don’t have the confidence to do what the Lord said we can do from the start. Our weakness is not part of the equation. It’s about God’s strength, not ours.
God’s word confirms this. At the end of the first chapter of Jeremiah, the Lord declares, “They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you.” After several verses that describe what Jeremiah was to do, the Lord reassured him of his victory before the victory had even been won. That’s what I love the most about this passage. Despite Jeremiah’s status that stemmed from coming from an “unruly” priestly family amongst the Levites, the Lord brought forth a divine calling upon Jeremiah’s life. In more than 40 years of Jeremiah’s pursuit to warn the Israelites of their sinful ways, he pressed into the Lord. He faithfully surrendered his comforts to a higher calling.
I want to be more like that. I want to follow the Lord wholeheartedly without any assurance of a “happily ever after” ending in return. Jeremiah planted seeds where they needed to be planted and kept moving forward. He didn’t wait around and watch for the fruit to grow. A professor at the Bible school, Bodenseehof, I went to once said, “God could use a pile of rocks to plant a church. If He’s going to do something with you, it’s because He wants to do something in you and through you. Not because you will do something for Him.” I am in no position to qualify for the calling that God can call me to at any part of my journey…. whether I have it “all together” or am completely falling apart. It is about His work, not my own.
Lesson three: You don’t lose when you surrender, you win.
Climbing out of the pit is, ironically, a matter of surrender. Surrendering every single thing that we think we have control over and things we know very well that we do not. Although the Lord already knows every bit of clutter or part of “cleanliness” that we possess in our lives, there’s greater love in action. Actions will always be far more profound than our words will ever be. There is a lingering lie behind the act of surrender; the lie that life will fall apart the moment that we give up control of our lives. In a culture that praises being put together and having it all, the act of surrender goes against every grain in our human nature. Yet, I’ve found that fruit needs to be plucked and savored when the time comes -- in order for there to be room for more fruit to grow. Through the act of surrendering, you are not giving up. You are actively pursuing the Lord with your whole heart and declaring a profound trust that words could never emulate.
Lesson four: Submission is active, not passive.
Submission is something you need to lean into. It’s so easy to sit here and write about surrender. It’s so easy to talk about the “Look at where I’ve grown!” moments and bask in the goodness of the Lord. But my humanity and inconsistency get the best of me. As I write, I’m sitting on the floor of my room as tears hit the pages of my journal. I’m tightly gripping onto plans and circumstances that are far beyond my reach. Satan is quick to alter the truth and even quicker to rewind our growth. In this moment of bitter helplessness, I’m crying out, “Lord, help me.” I simply have no other words to say.
It’s these breaking moments that make me shamelessly run towards the Father and latch onto Him as tight as I can. It’s these moments that make me realize how sweet life is when I’m not the one in control…when my life is in the capable palms of the Almighty Creator; a place of everlasting peace and rest. When the chaos is consuming, He’s surrounding me…fighting my battles. Fighting each and every single one of His children’s battles. SURRENDER ALL OF IT TO HIM. There’s no other path that leads to freedom other than straight through Him. No other way out. But it’s an active, daily pursuit. Satan knows his destiny and will relentlessly pursue each of our paths as ruthlessly as possible. Let the Warrior win. Keyword…LET Him. Don’t shut the Victor out when the battle is raging.
So, summing it up – this first blog post is my act of submission. This is my first action of stepping forward. What about you? Has God called you to submit somehow in your life? What did you learn and how did you grow? I’d love to hear what you think in the comments below or by sending me an email at Katherine.stanley@comcast.net. Let’s be an encouragement to each other.
He’s just getting started.