Yield And Surrender
by Nancy Harry
I always told my children to pick up their shoes and put them away. One day I tripped over a pair of my own shoes and broke a toe. My children never let me live it down. Even now that they are grown, they will sometimes still bring it up. For some reason they found the incident very funny. But my throbbing, hurting toe did not find it as amusing. The slightest bump, even the slightest touch would cause pain to go racing through my body causing yelps of pain. It was not a happy toe. When all was healed, a bump or touch would practically go unnoticed.
Our heart reacts the same way. If we’ve been hurt in a particular area, then when we see in others the slightest tendency in that area – whether thinking they would hurt, that they would offend, that they would try to control - our sensitive heart begins to holler: “Be careful. Watch out.” And that may be good. But when it goes unchecked and unhealed, it soon leads to unstoppable, unrestrained complaints, condemning, prejudices, anger…sometimes even against God. What has caused your sensitive areas, your sore spots?
The Lord once said to me to tell his people:
“I love you so much. Because you suffer, does not mean I don’t love you. When a parent watches his child trip and fall, it doesn’t mean it was the parent’s fault, or that he doesn’t love the child because he didn’t save him from tripping and falling.
But you say to me, I guess God doesn’t love me because He left me trip and fall and I got hurt. A loving parent will encourage the fallen child to get up and will tell him, he’ll be ok. If it is needed, he’ll dress and bandage the wound. And it heals.
And so, just as a loving parent, I encourage you to learn from those events that take place in your life. Come to me and let me hold you and bandage your wound. For have I not said, I bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted?”
It’s time to yield your inner hurts, the pain that lingers in your heart, the offenses that still fester and the insults that still smart to the one that says let me carry the burden for you. Surrender them all to the Lord, because he cares for you. He can handle them all. His heart is not too small or his arms too short that he can’t carry them for you. Surrender to his love and to his help. Surrender to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Surrender to wisdom and not to pride.
Yield those open wounds, and the wounds still festering and hiding under scabs - to your Lord. Let Jesus release in you the ability to forgive, to draw out the infection. Let him sooth them with his healing balm of love for you. It’s time to yield and surrender, because it’s true – he came to heal the brokenhearted.
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