Surrender

Thoughts from: Not the End but the Road by Gary Thomas.

Each of us will face different trials at different times, and these trials will cause us to change. Depending on our attitude, such challenges will leave us with an ugly, bitter, cynical, and mean spirit, or a stronger, more Christlike character. How we profit from or are crushed by our trials largely depends upon our state of surrender to God.

The virtue of surrender reveals the purity of our heart's motivation. If we come to God to be amply provided for, yet we find ourselves poor, we’ll leave God. If we come to God to be made well, yet find ourselves sick, we'll leave Him. If, however, our motivation is simply to serve Him and glorify His name, no event in life can shake our faith, for God can be glorified in pain or pleasure, wealth or poverty, comfort or stress.

Seventeenth-century French mystic Jeanne Guyon realized that to experience a hard circumstance that goes against our will is a gift. When accepted with the right spirit, it becomes an important means to a higher end: the presence of God Himself. As Paul taught, we are coheirs with Christ "if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory (Romans 8:17).

Not much I can add to that.

Philip