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The joy of surrender
Key to the spirituality of Mothers’ Prayers, a prayer movement founded ten years ago by Veronica and Sandra Williams, is the importance of surrender to the Lord in all things. Below Veronica shares her experiences of trying to live this out in her daily life.
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I found this to be true not just in my own personal life but also in Mothers’ Prayers, the ministry into which the Lord has called me. All along I have felt it is His ministry and I have responded rather than initiated things. It has been really incredible over the last ten years how things have grown - we are now in over 80 countries - simply by us as mothers responding to what the Lord has asked us to do. “Leaving china behind” Little by little the Lord has used Mothers’ Prayers to help me to surrender my securities to Him and to grow in detachment from worldly things. One example was when I felt Him asking me to leave my special china collection behind when He put it on my heart to swap houses with another Christian couple. At the time we needed bigger premises for Mothers’ Prayers. Five years later, He also put on my heart that I should sell my business, which had been my security and had helped fund my travel for Mothers’ Prayers, so that we could buy a larger community house in Kent. I had to surrender to the Lord my natural concern about my children’s inheritance and that they might be offended. The Lord honoured my prayer and one of my sons-in-law, who was an atheist, has now given his life to the Lord and often helps out at the centre. I would now say that I am even closer to my children than I was before. “We will never be truly happy unless we are within his plan” I believe God loves us so much that we will never be truly happy unless we are living within His plan, so it isn’t a question of making a big sacrifice for Him, but rather of knowing that He knows what is best for us at every stage of our life and therefore following His will joyfully. I know I will only be truly happy in my life when I live within His will. It can be quite hard keeping to the original vision when a movement grows so quickly and is spread all over the world in so many different countries and cultures. Much prayer is needed because, for a leader, there is a need to be both flexible and open to what others say whilst guarding the vision the Lord has given. We felt our call was simply, as mothers, to come together to pray for our children and for each other, surrendering our concerns to God. One of the blessings of this simplicity has meant that women from all social backgrounds, Christian traditions and political opinions can come together and pray simply as mothers. “Sticking to the simplicity of our original calling” Mothers’ Prayers is now celebrating its 10th anniversary. During this time of great blessings, we have also had to face the difficulty of pressure from well-intentioned people who have had their own ideas about what the Mothers’ Prayers groups might be used for. Some of the ideas proposed were good in themselves but they were not consistent with the spirituality of simplicity and total surrender or with the original vision. To add or take anything away from this would have threatened our unity across denominations and nationalities. It is always hard to deal with conflicts like this and hurts are inevitable but it is necessary when we have surrendered our own ideas to the Lord and are trying to follow His leadings. There was one difficult situation I was facing which I really didn’t know how to handle and was causing me a lot of pain. A priest suggested that I pray the ‘Jericho prayer’. This involved praying Scriptures and certain prayers for seven days. My first reaction was that this was not the usual way I prayed. But the Lord immediately brought to mind the story of Naaman the leper. When Elisha told him to bathe in the river Jordan seven times he initially resisted, but subsequently obeyed and was healed. I sensed that the Lord was asking me to be humble and follow the priest’s advice. On the final day of the prayer I asked the Lord for a confirmation that all was well. To my delight the reading for that day from a book I picked up at random started with the words, “only believe the walls of Jericho fell down”. The Jericho prayer is all about praising God and following His instruction. I really felt that the Lord was confirming to me that conflict is truly settled in this way and not by compromise or argument. “Conflict in community is inevitable” Community life involves conflict from time to time, as people may see the way forward differently. The answer is love and prayer. This is easy to say but very hard to put into practice. Conflict can be very painful and our reactions to it vary. We often don’t understand one another and why we think differently. Sometimes we spend a lot of time thinking, worrying and being upset about why this person said this or the other. We can replay the conversations or situations over and over in our minds, reliving the hurt and justifying ourselves endlessly. We have a tendency to defend ourselves and our reactions but Jesus once reminded me that He too was misunderstood and yet remained silent. So, with great difficulty, I have learned not to defend myself if I am attacked or criticised, but to trust in the Lord, surrender it all to Him and to pray for the person concerned. This, I now understand, is the meaning of turning the other cheek. Learning to hand over problems to the Lord has brought me great peace in such situations. “Learned not to defend myself” We learn, in our families as well as in community, that the way we react to situations affects those around us as well as ourselves. If we allow hurts and resentments to take root in our lives they will produce bad fruit. The evil one is quick to use every opportunity to cause division and breed mistrust in our relationships. All this can distract us from what we should be doing, so daily surrender to God of all these things is essential. However, it is often difficult to LEAVE these things with Him as the hurts keep presenting themselves in our minds. When this happens I say to the Lord ‘Sorry Lord, I have given this situation to you and now I am taking it back again. I now place it all back into Your care’. I know that only He can give me peace. Then as I re-surrender them to Him, this peace returns. It is wonderful how quickly this simple prayer can change my sadness into joy.We are all in need of healing so when we fall, we shouldn’t be discouraged because through this we realise just how much we need God’s Grace. This will also help to keep us humble and aware of how we much we need the prayers of others too. As St Paul says, “..it is when I am weak that I am strong.” (2 Cor 12.10). The spiritual life is continual surrender and the challenge is to do it joyfully.
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About
15 years ago I decided to totally surrender my life to God so I could
become the person he wanted me to be. My life totally changed from that
moment on. The lead up to this life-changing decision was a rather painful
period during which I was trying to please everybody only to discover
that this compromised who I really was. I was running a business at
the time but, despite success, was still unhappy. After surrendering
my life to the Lord, although I continued to go through difficulties,
I experienced them in a different way. I knew I was in the Lord’s
hands and he was in charge. This gave me great peace. I discovered that
in surrender it is possible to experience joy in the midst of pain and
that the key to it all is giving our will to the Lord so that His will
can be done in our lives. 