FOCUSED SURRENDER


Is your life one big frustration? Is that frustration coming from a miserable past? Is the frustration tied to marital strife, failure at work, a self-destructive behavior, or opposition all around you? Are you finding yourself all too often powerless to deal with or overcome your frustration? The answer is to shift your focus away from your frustration to a God seeking focus that makes your life all about him. 
 
There is a verse in the Bible that can bring a solution to your frustration. If you are ready to shift your focus to God. It is found in Hosea 10:12. “I said, 'Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.'” 
 
The prophet Hosea said to “plow up the hard ground of your hearts.” The King James Version says, “break up your fallow ground.” What is fallow ground? It is land that could be productive, but for whatever reason it hasn't been broken and plowed and prepared for planting making hard ground. This means that it's generally good ground, although right now it may be stumpy and lumpy and thorny and rocky and in serious need of some care. 
 
Now, we all have areas of fallow ground in our hearts — areas that are not yet fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit. You have areas in which the ground has the potential for being good, but hasn't yet been tilled, because you're refusing to let go. You might be saying, "God, I want to experience the harvest over there, in the area of my business but over here in the area of giving, I'm not quite ready to plough that ground." You might be saying, "God, I want you to reign supreme over there in my marriage but over here in my thought life, well, I'm not quite ready to take a tiller to that." These areas are the fallow ground of your heart—the unplowed ground. You cannot experience the fullness of God — the fullness of his power, his protection, his provision, and his presence — if your heart is marked by unplowed, unprepared, untended territory. 
 
Focusing on God means that you surrender everything to him. Everything you have. Every area of your life. Focusing on God involves surrender. I'm talking about repentance. I'm talking about turning your back on sinful attitudes and sinful actions that come between you and your relationship with God. I'm talking about having the courage to say, "God I fully submit this area of my life to you help me now to do what I need to do to clean it up." 

 Seeking God means that every day, and even all throughout the day, you're yielding to him in every area of your life. And every time you encounter an unplowed patch of your heart, you break it up and you surrender it to his Lordship.

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