Well, it has been about a month since I last blogged. If you have not read my last blog, I highly recommend it just saying. Anyways, it’s about the end of September now, meaning one month of school is almost behind me. It has been a crazy month from getting used to being at college once again but this time for a full year instead of one semester to even just figuring out how this year will go for me. Also I hope I am not the only one that thinks this but, I think the beginning of a new school year feels like a brand new year in general it’s an odd feeling. Anyways….
This past month God has been working in me a lot which I did not see coming at all. It honestly makes me quite excited to see what else He will do for me this year and what He will reveal to me. These last few weeks have been quite challenging for myself because I think Satan was trying to get into my head to change my current mindset into something I think God doesn’t want me to focus on right now nor that it should be my main priority. Instead God gave me an image which I think is His hope for me for this year. The image has to do with the title of this blog post. Basically I am standing in between the cross and the world with a heavy burden on my back. In order for me to get to God fully, I have to lay everything down before Him which can be anything from my anxiety that I deal with daily to my relationships with people. Then by doing that I am able to walk fully to Him in confidence and knowing that I don’t need to worry about what is going to happen next. It is a hard struggle for me to do in general. However, our God is a God of miracles, we know that He has gone before us, we know that we will get through anything we face with Him by our side.
I’ll leave you with this. I believe these lyrics below are a prayer for me this year. To fully and completely be able to surrender everything that I am dealing with to God.
“All to Jesus I surrender
All to You I freely give
I will ever love and trust You
In Your presence I will live”- My Heart is Yours by Kirstian Stanfill
God’s Daughter in Training 
Have you ever read Pilgrim’s Progress? There is a beautiful moment in that book where Christian comes to the cross, and all this time he’s been carrying this heavy burden, but he comes to the cross and falls to his knees and his burden falls off his back and tumbles down into the sepulchre, and he never sees it again.
The horror of sin is that we think God has turned from us, waiting for us to come to him, to let him take our burden, required to please and become pleasing to God before we can experience him fully, but the beauty of the gospel and the utter relief of holiness, is that Father didn’t wait for you to do anything; Jesus was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world, it was always in His heart to save us from our chronic misconception. We turned away, but every time we did Father met us where we were face to face with open arms.
The gospel is such a relief because everything we “have to do” becomes a natural love response when we begin to understand the extent of his already-present love for us, instead of a formula for getting closer to a supposed distant, displeased God (and if it’s not a natural response to that then it’s nothing you have to do at all) I guess what I’m trying to say in all this is that, even surrendering, is a natural response to Father’s love; it isn’t something you have to do to experience him more (though of course naturally, you will as your mind learns to be more aware of his presence all around you!) But it’s something he will lead you to, by his love, often in the depths of crisis at rock bottom where there is no way out but to rely completely on his strength ❤
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