A Right to Surrender

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me." -Galatians 2:20

I was reading Beth Moore's "Living Beyond Yourself" study this morning between the end of church and the beginning of lunch and I came across this powerful statement: "You may have the right to be angry, the right to be bitter, the right to leave your husband or give up on that wayward teenager. But to be crucified with Christ means that you volunteer to forego all your personal rights except one: your right as a believer to be filled and led by the Spirit of Christ."

The things that have happened to me over the years have certainly merited feelings of hurt, bitterness, depression, grief, and insecurity. God gives me the chance to feel something different. To release my natural responses to the authority of His supernatural responses is my right to surrender. I have to feel the difficulty of fully letting go in order to fully grasp what God is calling me to. This world gives us every right to be prideful, self-relying, consumed, deflated, and passed by till we go numb in the brain. Since we have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer our rights that dictate our lives. It's our God-given rights, which are faith, security, love, protection, potential, fellowship, and everything else God has in store for those who love Him:

"But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.”

-1 Cor. 2:9-10