Philippians 3:7-8 “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,”

That verse is one I would call my life-verse. My goal is to live every moment remembering the value of knowing Christ – He is more important than anything else I might count as worth something. Anything earthly that I deem valuable should be rubbish compared to my relationship with Christ.

These past three months I’ve been studying for the national Bible Bee competition. I have been spending over five hours a day studying and memorizing verses. I want to do my very best in this competition. And of course, we all dream of winning. But these past few months God has been challenging me to surrender my dreams to Him.

Many times in preparation for this competition, I’ve had to stop and ask myself this question: Am I willing to count success in Bible Bee as loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ? Am I willing to lose in order to know Jesus more? To be honest, this is a hard question to answer. The church-kid in me says “yes” automatically, but if I really stop and think about this question and chew it over in my mind, I find that my old-self is in conflict with my new-self (see Col. 3:9-10). My new-self knows that I must lay this competition at the feet of Jesus and leave it there, but my old-self wants to hold onto my dreams of success. My old self tells me that it’s ok to hold onto these dreams, as long as I remind myself occasionally that they’re unrealistic. But that is not what God tells me. God is asking me to surrender everything to Him – and not just this competition, but everything in my life: school, free time, friendships, etc.

So again I ask myself: am I willing to count everything as rubbish so that I may gain Christ?

My answer is yes. But just because my answer is yes doesn’t mean I don’t still struggle with trying to hold onto the things I’ve surrendered to God. Surrender isn’t a one-time deal. I have to continually surrender my dreams to God, to pray for His will to be done in every area of my life, and make the conscious decision to trust and rest in Him.

Sisters, I want to encourage you to surrender. While it is hard, it is so freeing. Let God take control of every area of your life and you will be amazed to see what He does. Yes, it will be difficult because your old-self doesn’t like to let God be in control. But God will give you the strength to continually surrender, day by day, and moment by moment.

Sometimes I find myself thinking: if I’ve surrendered the results of this competition to God, should I not put effort into competing? No! On the contrary, I should give God my best for His glory! Colossians 3:23 “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men,” No matter what you surrender to God, be it career dreams, your love life, or friendships, you still need to do everything heartily for the Lord, because He is worth it.

I’d like to leave you with a quote from my favorite movie, Facing the Giants:

“And if we win, we praise Him. And if we lose, we praise Him. Either way we honor Him with our actions and our attitudes. So I’m asking you – who are you living for? I resolve to give God everything I’ve got, then I’ll leave the results up to Him.”

Will you surrender?

With love,

Kelsey

P.S. To learn more about the National Bible Bee, visit https://biblebee.org/