Surrender is a gift that you can give yourself. It's an act of faith. It's saying that even though I can't see where this river is flowing, I trust it will take me in the right direction.
Faith does not need to push the river because faith is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing. We are in it.
Trust yourself in God's hands. Maintain your relationship to Jesus Christ by the patience of faith. 'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.'
Faith is the surrender of the mind; it's the surrender of reason, it's the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It's our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated.
When people come to you for help, do not turn them off with pious words, saying, 'Have faith and take your troubles to God.' Act instead as though there were no God, as though there were only one person in the world who could help -- only yourself.
Spiritually, no action is more important than surrender. Surrender is the tenderest impulse of the heart, acting out of love to give whatever the beloved wants. Surrender is being alert to exactly what is happening now, not imposing expectations from the past. Surrender is faith that the power of love can accomplish anything, even when you cannot foresee the outcome of a situation.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me...you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Did He give me the gift of love to say who I could choose? When God made me did He give me the gift of voice so some could silence me? Did he give me the gift of vision not knowing what I might see? Did he give me the gift of compassion to help my fellow man?
Buddha says if you surrender the ego, if you surrender yourself, you come in a harmony with the law and everything starts happening on its own. You have but to surrender. If you are ready to disappear, you will be full of the law and the law will take care.
The more I get into this industry the more I kind of see that it'll take as much as you give. So for me, setting boundaries is sometimes saying no, and just being like, 'Actually I don't want to do that' even though people might in my situation say yes.
Trust is faith that has become absolute, approved, and accomplished. When all is said and done, there is a sort of risk in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full bloom. Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are aware.
In many ways, writing is the act of saying 'I,' of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying, 'Listen to me, see it my way, change your mind.' It's an aggressive, even a hostile act.
I just can't surrender. I can't start something and then surrender because of political reasons. I just don't do that, and that goes back to me, why I keep running when I should probably take it easy, even though I have no hobbies, and enjoy the rest of my life.
The universe is like a river. The river keeps on flowing. It doesn't care whether you are happy or sad, good or bad; it just keeps flowing. Some people go down to the river and they cry. Some people go down to the river and they are happy, but the river doesn't care; it just keeps flowing. We can use it and enjoy it, or we can jump in and drown. The river just keeps flowing because it is impersonal, and so it is with the universe. The universe that we live in can support us or destroy us. It's our interpretation and use of the laws that determine our effects or results.
God, I know that if you bring me to it, you will bring me through it. I know you have a plan, but quite honestly I don’t see it right now. But I know it’s there. I know I have to believe. I know I need to have faith. I have to trust you. And I do trust you. But it’s hard right now.
I want to write something so simply about love or about pain that even as you are reading you feel it and as you read you keep feeling it and though it be my story it will be common, though it be singular it will be known to you so that by the end you will think— no, you will realize— that it was all the while yourself arranging the words, that it was all the time words that you yourself, out of your heart had been saying.
Faith, as the Bible teaches it, is faith in God coming against everything that contradicts Him- a faith that says, “I will remain true to God’s character whatever He may do.” The highest and the greatest expression of faith in the whole Bible is- “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).