When God Asks You to Surrender
“They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.”
- Isaiah 49:10
I am a recovering perfectionist.
I grew up being taught that performance was everything, and that self-reliance mattered more than anything else. I was under the assumption and learned belief that God would only help you if you helped yourself. So I built my life on striving, planning, and executing. I believed that if I could present God with the perfect plan, surely He’d accept it and bless it.
oof... how wrong I was.
After a series of life-altering events that flipped my world upside down, I found myself brought low—empty, exhausted, and out of ideas. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what felt like failure was actually an invitation: God was calling me into holy surrender.
I fought Him at first. I kept handing Him perfectly polished plans ideas that I had spent hours researching and planning for—career paths, goals, new directions—all built around self-sufficiency. Every time, those plans unraveled quickly in a matter of weeks if not a couple of days. What I thought was God's rejection was really divine redirection.
It finally took burnout, silence, and stillness before I finally began to understand:
God didn’t want my striving. He wanted me.
Not the curated, cleaned-up version of me.
Not the productive, put-together version either.
He wanted my messy, broken, surrendered life and heart.
And when I finally laid down my need to prove myself and started simply being with Him…
Everything changed.
He began to show me that He isn’t asking me to figure it all out first.
He’s asking me to walk with Him.
To trust Him.
To rest in His goodness, not mine.
Because of Jesus, we don’t have to strive for grace.
We don’t have to perform for approval.
We don’t have to earn a love that’s already been freely given.
It’s not “after all we can do.” It’s all because of what He has already done.
He meets us in the desert and leads us beside springs of water.
He doesn’t say, “Fix it first.”
He says, “Come.”
Come as you are. Come tired. Come broken. Come doubting.
And He will lead you—because He is a good, compassionate Father.
God’s Word promises He accepts us in our perfectly imperfect mess.
And in that season, He kept bringing me back to:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”
- Proverbs 3: 5-6
But He didn’t leave me there.
He filled my heart with promise after promise. Here are just a few:
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
- 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
- Matthew 11: 28-30“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.”
- Ephesians 2:8-9
“The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail.”
-Isaiah 58:11
So, if you’ve been trying to figure it all out, striving to earn God's love or approval—
lay it down.
God isn’t asking for perfection.
He’s inviting you to walk with Him, to trust Him, to rest in Him.
He’s already done the heavy lifting.
Just come.
