God Grows: Small Steps of Surrender
How do we describe in a newsletter all that God's said and done in, around, and through us in the last few months?
How do we go about trying to summarize to anyone reading this newsletter what Jesus has been teaching us?
And why would we do, say, or write anything without being authentically, uniquely us, Phil and Elizabeth Stepnowski?
From June to August, there have been many moments of high excitement, enthusiasm, joy, and encouragement, times where we felt like God was giving us a big high-five! And, of course, we've also trudged through pits of deep discouragement, frustration, and anger, times when we questioned whether or not He really called us here and if we're even listening to Him at all. Thankfully, The Lord has used both the highs and the lows to grow us closer together and closer to Himself.
In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul has this exchange with God:
So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
So how do we boast about our weaknesses so that Christ's power may work in and through us? How in the world are we strong when we're weak? What does that actually look like?
For us, this doesn't make an ounce of sense without one key word: Surrender.
For all the times...
when we're desperately hungry...
when we're deeply troubled...
when we're helplessly tired and exhausted...
when we're overwhelmingly anxious and stressed...
when we're confused about the future and what steps to take...
when we feel useless and unworthy...
We surrender our feelings, emotions, thoughts, desires, bodies, hearts, minds, souls, and spirits to Jesus; trusting, believing, and receiving by faith that His loving grace is truly all we need, that He alone satisfies us. This looks like mustering up a prayer of: "This sucks, Lord. Why is it so difficult? Help us, Jesus, we're yours." It looks like making the choice to put on a worship song and praise Him, saying "You're Good, Lord, no matter what I'm feeling or what I'm going through." In moments of weakness, surrender feels like the hardest thing to do. Giving up control of our situation and emotions is the last thing on our minds. And yet, eventually, He shifts our attention, our focus, to Him and to others instead of ourselves and our situation. He removes the blinders and allows us to breathe again, hope again, love, and be loved, again.
So what does surrender look like for you? How have you seen God's power being made perfect in your weakness?
Take a listen to this worship song below and these lyrics by UPPERROOM about surrender. Is this your view of surrender? That there truly is joy in surrender?
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The Joy of Surrender + The Stand (Spontaneous) - UPPERROOM Worship
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Praises:
-Opportunities to spend more time with neighborhood kids across the street (building Trampoline, playing in front yard, going to birthday party).
-Two-week RV Trip out west with Elizabeth's family to rest, enjoy God's beautiful creation, and spend more time with family.
-Regular Thursday-morning coffee and discipleship time with Elliott. Jesus revealing new truths to us, breaking down the lies and barriers of the enemy, bringing true life, freedom, and joy through vulnerability, honesty, prayer, reading His Word, and pursuing Him together.
-Food donations (loads of bread one day and corn another!) from a friend of a friend, with the goal of distributing it to our neighborhood and community.
-Our first community meal at our front yard picnic table. We had 6 neighbors show up and we got to know them more.
- Phil lead the 5th-6th Grade Boys room (of 30+ boys!) at Trinity Church's VBS (Vacation Bible School) the last week of July and got to love them and share God's truth with them.
-Weekly harvesting and donating produce from Elizabeth's garden and also getting to know, love, and encourage garden volunteers.
-Prayer walks in our community and meeting new people in our large neighborhood.
-Iron-sharpens-iron, Disciple-making friendship with Emmanuel (friend from Trinity). Mutual encouragement, challenge, growth, prayer.
-Weekend with Elizabeth's boss at her cottage, sharing stories, sharing our lives, being with her, praying with her.
-Time in Chicago visiting Phil's family and intentionally loving on his brother, sister-in-law, niece, Dad, and stepmom. First conversations in Polish with Dad and stepmom about discipleship, Jesus' life, the Bible.
-First-ever virtual discipleship conference happened in August, "Come and See", for men in the U.S. through Network 20 International (Phil works with Network 20 and helped plan the conference).
-God highlighting middle and high school students at Trinity's youth groups to invest in and disciple. God speaking and revealing himself to students and leaders more and more.
-God leading Phil by His Holy Spirit to a man on a street corner to listen to him, give him a specific dollar amount, and pray for him.
-Showed love to a neighbor by helping fix a slashed tire.
-Much needed rest time and encouragement from Phil's mom and time with her in Holland.
-Elizabeth's weekly time with her mom to be honest, vulnerable, and encourage and pray for one another.
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