“Surrender yourself completely to me, your loving God and Father. Then everything will work out.” (Inner Word)
What does our Heavenly Father mean by these words?
We need only look at what is said in Luke 10:27, and then it will become clear. It says there: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”
The Lord wants to be loved with all our heart. That is, we should put nothing before Him and serve Him gladly. This love for God means avoiding what might displease Him and seeking what pleases Him. It means living our entire existence consciously in Him. Our first thought in the morning and our last thought at night should belong to God; the whole day should be directed toward Him, and the night should be entrusted to our Father.
The word “surrender” implies that we are to draw our entire sense of security from our relationship with our Father. This is especially important in those situations we cannot master on our own, and we must not shy away from them when they lie in our path.
Consider St. Peter, who caught no fish all night but, at Jesus’s word, went out onto the lake once more and made an extraordinary catch. Peter left his previous negative experience behind and, in faith, opened himself to the Lord’s word instead.
This “opening oneself” is not merely an optimistic or fatalistic surrender to the course of events. Rather, we open ourselves to the loving God and Father in whom we trust.
For some, this commitment to God may be granted early in their journey of following Christ; for others, it takes longer to practice letting go of themselves again and again in order to live fully under God’s guidance.
Nevertheless, when we do this, everything the Father has planned for our journey will come to pass.