The last two weeks I have been going through a zoom small group session with the Pastoral Care Pastor at church. We are reading through a book called SHAPE by Erik Rees. It’s about learning what spiritual gift(s) God has given you to use for His glory, where God has stirred in your heart a passion for a group of people or cause, what natural abilities He has given you, your personality, and experiences that you can use to relate, empathize, and minister to others…all for Him. I have been working through many questions in each of these areas and talking to God about what I feel He is showing me. I am good at talking, dreaming, and planning but often times I don’t take the time to just listen and hear from Him. That’s why this post is about surrender. I want to learn how to surrender my life to Him and what that truly means. What are the things I need to surrender so that I can truly hear from Him and know His desires for the life He has given me. Here are some things I know I want to learn how to surrender to Him.

1. relationships
2. expectations
3. comfort
4. convenience
5. my feelings
6. my wants

I am learning that the spiritual gift I feel I can see most clearly in my life is encouragement. I find it natural for me to be excited for others and their dreams. I love to motivate, inspire, listen, learn, and encourage others to live to their fullest potential. I feel that’s what makes me feel most alive. I enjoy one on ones or small groups of people connecting and growing deeper. I find this so fulfilling. Right now I bounce back and forth between working with seniors to college students. Such a wide age range. I wonder if it has something to do with the different stages of exploring the meaning of life and their purpose here. For college students they are trying to understand themselves apart from their family as well and what they want to do in life professionally. There’s a lot of deep exploring and finding out who they are during this stage in life. I think the reason I like also being with seniors is because I feel they have wisdom to share from their own experiences, they are comfortable in who they are, and can offer a better perspective of life to those that are younger than them. I feel seniors appreciate your time and presence where as the rest of the world is too busy for what I believe are the important things in life, relationships. As I reflect on what I just wrote, I wonder if working with college students is my ministry because I feel I can give back by having more experience than them, whereas seniors are the group that blesses me. Maybe I give back to both groups with a different purpose in mind. With college students, maybe my purpose is to spend time listening and encouraging them pursue who they were made to be and with seniors I listen and encourage them by giving them my time as a way of saying thank you for pouring into my life and those that are younger.