As we start to enter the final month of this year, I can’t help but reflect on the greatest and toughest moments of 2023. Reflecting through a year can get one thinking about many encounters, events and laughs in between it all, but for me there was a specific theme that God seemed to have put on repeat. It’s almost as if there was a broken record in the vinyl player repeating these very words, “Surrender the need to understand Steve.”
“But why? I want to understand.” I thought to myself.
Let’s just say I went into full on lawyer mode with God, and I decided to try and prove as to why I needed to understand everything that was going on in my life to God (isn’t it funny how we try to explain to the one who created us, how we think we should think).
I wanted to understand why things were the way they were? Why do I feel like I’m growing so immensely right now, yet I feel so overcome by the worries of this world in the same breath. Then I started to realize that this wasn’t only happening to me, but it was happening to so many people that I know and love all around me.
“Surrender the Need to Understand Steve”
There it was again! But this time, it really got me thinking. So much so, that I began to really study what this meant in the Word to see what God was trying to reveal to me. And this is what I found:
5 “He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars - if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 Abram believed in the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
— Genesis 15:6 NIV *Underline(s) added*
This conversation that just took place, was between Abraham and God in the book of Genesis. However, there is one very important observation that God showed me not too long ago, and I really do hope that it encourages you.
Scripture says that Abraham simply, “believed in the LORD.” This is HUGE! “Why is this huge Steve?”, I’m glad you asked. It is huge because it does not say that Abraham, “understood.” It says that he, “believed!” I mean even Jesus quotes this in the Bible later too.
29 Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
— John 6:29 NIV *Underline(s) added*
Even Jesus is reminding us to believe Him. He’s not telling us to understand Him! It’s not that Jesus is against the very concept of understanding at all, it’s just that He doesn’t want our understanding to be the place that we put all our trust instead of Him. Because when we start to put all our trust in the understanding of what He has blessed us with, we start to depend on our own understanding more than His.
This is crazy! He is reminding us how important it is to first believe Him before we can begin to understand the things of Him. And even when we begin to understand more of who He is as a Heavenly Father to us let’s not allow our human ego to get in the way of simply trusting Him again – just like a child.
“Surrender the Need to Understand”
I think I’m starting to not just “get it,” but I’m really beginning to believe it too.
All in all, I do hope this little blog post has reawakened a longing to truly come back to a place of relinquishing the control that we sometimes so desperately hold onto. Maybe instead of holding so tightly onto our understanding, let’s take the first step of trust again in this season of life as we come to the close of 2023 and surrender the need to understand going into the new year.
God Bless His Church, and I’m fully trusting that Holy Spirit will guide every one of us into this next season with His peace that surpasses our understating. Let’s truly believe that if God is for us, then who can be against us? No obstacle or trial will take us out, especially when we wholeheartedly rely on Him through our believe and not our understanding.