Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Anchor Me In the Middle of Your Deep Blue Sea

So anyways, the key word for me these last few years has been surrender. I’ve been learning to lay down my agenda and let God “take me where you will”. YOU lead ME has been pretty much my motto. It’s been a life changing thing. Learning to release my wants and needs and allowing God to meet them in his own way has been frightening and freeing. But it came from a place of knowing of his love for me.

It kind of all began at Parachute a few years ago. I was in serious pain from a year or three of battering (O afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted…). I was dying inside really. I went to one of the night concerts and quite honestly, everything changed. Tree 63 was playing – I’d never heard them before. They had the lyrics up on the screen and one of their first songs literally changed my life.

It goes like this:

Can we hang out tonight underneath Your ceiling
I could stare up at a million lights and listen to You breathing
If I fall fast asleep it's just because I feel so safe in You
It won't take much to wake me up

Could I walk out to sea way beyond these breakers
We have no place amongst the movers and the shakers
Yours is the only throne I'll ever get down on my knees before
You have the whole of me

Lover come away
Come away my lover

I heard You say
You've stolen my heart with one glance of Your eyes
When I fell down You raised me up
That's gravity

Yours is the only throne I'll ever get down on my knees before
You have the whole of me

Lover come away
When I fell down you were standing there waiting for me
You picked me up, welcomed me home
That's gravity

Won't You come away
Won't You come away with me
Lover of my soul

I stood there and cried and cried. I was overwhelmed with the knowledge that He loved me and also, that I loved him.

Another lyric said “they tell me to abandon you to make all my dreams come true. Well what am I supposed to do, I only dream of you”. It was a crazy moment because simultaneously I knew that I loved him and he loved me. Real deep passionate love like oceans and skies and mountains.

Perhaps the key line in the song above was this “yours is the only throne I’ll ever get down on my knees before”. This for me totally sums up the surrender that I needed to make. The throne that I had always bowed down to was the throne of myself – my desires, my passions, my fears, wants, needs, insecurities – my agenda. But no, that night at Parachute, I sang the words from the song and they’ve stayed with me ever since.

Anyways, the big change for me now is moving past surrender into submission. For me now, it’s not enough to just say ‘here is my life’ (YOU lead ME) but to actually submit myself to him. I come to him with my feelings (most often) and I give them to him – not just to keep but also to do with what he will. Make sense?

This a bit of a random blog, but just had to get some of these thoughts out and in an order of some kind.

I have a lot of FEELINGS at the moment – some woken up from a long sleep. Good ones and terrible bad ones. Some people who’ve been out of my life for ages have come back in. Some of these people stimulate good feelings and some not so good. I thought I’d dealt with a whole bunch of stuff but here it is – stirred back up.

I thought I was over it! But no. So back to the submission drawing board, time to let him have his way in me.

YOURS is the only throne I’ll ever get down on my knees before.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sharyn, I am so thrilled with what you have written. My own heart resonates with yours and I want to affirm to you that surrender to God's love is the best way to go.

After 58 years of fulfilled singleness and learning to experience God's love more and more each day I would never change this life of adventure and fulfillment that God has given me in following Him.

To actually allow God to be our guide and to surrender to His will is not something talked about much these days, but I believe it is the true way to happiness and fulfillment in the centre of His will.

I am so encouraged to see you being able to put into words what I have taken so many years to discover. In fact it is not about us having to prove our worth to God but it is about learning to RECEIVE GOD'S LOVE every day. As we surrender daily to His will and receive His love we can be confident to become all that He has planned for us.

I see that your heart attitude of surrender is what God is looking for more than anything else and I think that you have a great future. If God provides someone with the same heart passion to share your journey with, great, but actually His call is for all of us to walk with Him daily as the lover of our soul. Most people never come to understand this reality, that's why I am amazed that God has brought you to this understanding at such a young age. Go for it, you have a brilliant future in God's love, the best there is!

Iain said...

I know an old song that stirs something inside of me in a similar way.

You may even know it:

"You, O Lord, are my strength and shield; to You alone may my spirit yield"

The use of the term 'yield' stirs the valiant Knight dormant inside of me, but it really carries the same feeling.

Sharyn said...

Wow that was such a long Blog eh!

Thank you Ginette, for those loving and kind thoughts. I really appreciate your encouragement. You are an example of a woman who has not bowed down to the pressures around but who has lived a life of freedom with grace and dignity.

And Iain, you noble knight you, tis truly a lovely and good thing to do, to yield only to him. That's what those crazy Calvinists miss out on.

Iain said...

Funny you should mention that...

I'm actually campaigning to be a Calvinist as we speak. Vote for me at the next Elections, will you?