Becka's Surrender Story

My whole life I'd been slapping sticky notes to my heart, telling myself that I had the fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self control). I just couldn't understand why everytime I turned around peace was lying on the floor and self-control never did seem to have much stickiness to begin with.

I grew up in a Christian home. I was born to loving parents who have dedicated their lives to parachurch ministry focused on relational evangelism through apologetics. My parents have been in full-time para-church ministry since before I was born. Evangelism has been the heartbeat of my parents since they were both teenagers and it definitely became woven into my core as well. While growing up there was a great emphasis on knowledge and God’s word both from my parents and from the non-denominational church I attended. This provided me with a solid foundation for my faith to grow. I am deeply grateful that God placed me in the family he did, though they weren’t perfect, my parents actually lived out what they believed. As a result of only God’s grace, I kept choosing to believe and follow God at each crossroad in my life.

In 2013, on my 33rd bday or my "Jesus birthday" (as one of my brothers refers to it), I looked at my life and realized I wasn’t conformed to Christ any more than I was when I was 21. A desire began to grow in me to be more like Christ. Honestly, I didn’t know how to get there, I was already “doing all the things” (daily quiet times, serving in church, attending Bible Study, leading Bible study, attending conferences, going on missions). Over the next 7 years, God began working on me to draw me to himself into deeper intimacy. 2017-2020 was the most intense time of his working in my life. I began focusing on “being with him”, begging him to reveal where I was not in alignment with him. In his faithfulness, He confronted sin cycles and unhealthy attachments that I didn’t even know I had. I started saying yes to the promptings in my heart that went against what I wanted but that I sensed was what God had for me. I asked God to increase my understanding of his word. He did just that, and I was absolutely taken with the word of God like never before. I had a desire to be in his word and not just to check it off of the list. He began to reveal truths to me through scripture. Each moment with Him was increasingly rich. Little did I know that time would pale in comparison to how he was about to completely transform my life.

October 2020, now 40 years old, God completely wrecked me with his love in a way I had never experienced before. Through a conversation with a missionary friend of mine, unbeknownst to her, God sent me a personal message through something she was learning in a time of suffering she was experiencing. I was so taken aback that God would allow someone to suffer to communicate a message to me. God quickly reminded me that HE suffered and died for me, and she was just being Christ to me (it’s no small thing!) But at that moment God’s love poured down on me in a way I had never experienced before. It was like a waterfall and it broke something in me. I had always believed Jesus died for me, but somehow in my mind I'd made it less personal, he died for everyone and I was just a part of everyone. Though I've had many moments in my life where I could see God’s hand guiding me and giving me peace, there had never been a time when I actually experienced God’s love so personally and intimately. Everything that I ever believed in my head broke through to my heart and burst out. God drew me to my knees in full surrender to him. At that moment, on my knees with my head to the floor, I said “I’ll go wherever you want me to go, say whatever you want me to say, and do whatever you want me to do, please let me be a vessel for your love to share it with others.”

When I stood up from that moment everything was different. All my life I had been slapping the fruit of the spirit verse to my heart, but just like a sticky note it always eventually fell off. I would just try to tell myself “You have love, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control!!!” claiming the scripture but not seeing it play out in my life for any good length of time. After standing up from surrendering, I felt all of those things just present in me, with no effort of my own. I was shocked, nothing about my circumstances had changed (chaos of 3 kids, marriage issues, chaos of house under renovation, pandemic still raging) but I WAS CHANGED! God began speaking clearly to me through his word and also straight to my heart. I had never experienced this before. I actually questioned for about 24 hours if I had actually been a Christian before this point, God assured me I was. It’s just that I had only experienced moments of peace, moments of guidance/prompting from the Holy Spirit but now I had it ALL THE TIME! As I opened up the scripture to read Acts with new eyes, I was like “I get it, I finally get it!” My heart was completely changed towards my husband and kids. I honestly don’t know how to put into words what God has done over the past year, because it would take weeks to tell you the MILLION little and big ways he has moved and led me with the Holy Spirit. The main thing that I want people to know is that there is more to the Christian life than they are experiencing. No matter what level you find yourself on, Christ can always take you deeper.