We need the help of the Holy Spirit, God in us, in order to actually surrender. We need to walk in accordance to His word but also respond to every spiritual inclination we have within this surrendered attitude. We need to break away from tarnished ‘me-ness’ by actually responding to His ever-present ‘Isness’.
This is a whole new way of walking, depending on God’s spiritual direction while moving about in this physical world. We are so constrained by, conformed and accustomed to time, sight, feelings, and personal conditions that walking by faith and not by sight is a bit mysterious and strange. Yet, it is how real life is lived. How do we familiarize ourselves with this manner of living. Well, we have to Go to Know. When we go and exercise even just one of God’s promises, and only if we do this, will we discover it’s truth. Take this verse for example from Proverbs 3:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He Will direct your steps”.
Will He? Well, there is only one way to discover the answer and that is to actually trust Him and only move under His direction. The only way to know, is to go. This is something that takes practice, it is not natural to us. We must ‘go’ relying on Him to help us and then believe/know that He is, independent of us and all else. That is surrender, going to know.
As we desire and attempt to live as we are invited to, we are met with challenges. We are so accustomed to and conformed by feelings, opinion, insecurity, pragmatism, societal or community norms etc. that when we sense some spiritual leading, we question it. Is this God? Does this make sense? What will ‘they’ say? etc. Though our desire is pure, we are persuaded to lean on our own understanding resulting in self-direction and frustration.
God indeed knows all things and is not constrained to direct us into immeasurably more. He knows what we are made of, He knows our condition, He knows our responsibilities, fears, sins, weaknesses, warfare etc. He knows All – and knows how to take us from ‘here to there’ responsibly. He has all our fear provoking ‘what-ifs’ covered. When we are walking well, we are simultaneously in His will and walking into His will. This can only happen when we move, act upon that which we sense His spirit is saying or directing us to do.
I often will get a spiritual sense to turn left or right, or to call or text him or her etc….And I can easily reason why this is a good idea or not..or start to question whether this inclination is from God or is not…and in so doing – I am back to trusting in my own understanding…When I make my own decisions as to what might be God and what might not be God…I am trusting then in myself. We need to, by ‘going’, fine tune our relationship with His Spirit. And, if indeed we are imperfect in our spiritual discernment- well God our perfect Father will not penalize us for our desire to know Him and He will work this for good as well.