Women of Faith - Giving God Your Future

Copyright 2005 Thomas Nelson

Previously Published as Giving God Your All.

The publishers are grateful to Christa Kinde for her collaboration, writing skills, and editorial help in developing the content for this book.

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Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from The Holy Bible, The New King James Version (NKJV), copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-0-3106-8263-9

ISBN: 978-0-3106-8264-6 (eBook)

First Printing May 2016

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CONTENTS

Have you ever said what Ive said: Girl, I cant give everything to God. I dont know what He would want me to do. He might want to send me to Africa, and I dont like flies. Okay, Im not proud I said that. But when I said it, I really meant it. Fear had me boundthe fear of God telling me to do something that I either did not want to do or something that was not convenient. Shame on me.

Im glad God is a merciful God. He just let me go on with that nonsense until my spirit could take it no more. One night in 1955, the Holy Spirit of God convicted me to the point of falling on my face and surrendering all of me and mine to God. When I got up from the floor, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that God had accepted my repentance and my submission. And yes, He did send me to Africa, but I was not bothered one bit by flies. From that night to this day, I have attempted to lay it all on the altar before God and to submit to His will for my life.

This courageous study will help you to become willing to trust God with your everything because He is the God of everything. Whatever youre going through, God knew about it before He divided the water from the land, flung stars in space, and grew mighty trees. Its true. He is the Alpha (the beginning) and the Omega (the ending) of your experiences in life.

After I gave God my all, I was sitting around talking to some other womenpresidents of companies, entrepreneurs, computer gurus, and power brokers. They asked each one in the meeting to share their goals for the coming year. I listened to them talk and share their financial goals, career goals, personal goals, and so forth. When they got to me without any shame, I said, I have no goals for next year. In the past, every time I made goals for the coming year, I noticed that by February God had changed them. That was frustrating and fulfilling for me. Frustrating because I had spent valuable time, energy, and resources to develop my goals that went out of the window when God changed them. Fulfilling because when I turned my life over to God and gave Him my all, I realized that whatever He had for me to do was His will for my life. I no longer had to figure out what to doI just had to do it when I was told to by God. So my goals for the year became deadlines for what I had to do.

It sure makes life a lot easier to handle when all the responsibility of planning your future is left up to the Master of the Future. Deadlines without self-imposed duties are less stressful and more manageable. It requires knowing who our Leader is, understanding the causes and effects of our unwillingness to give God our all, throwing away our alibis, accepting the promises of God, trusting the only One who knows all our stuff, and saying bye-bye to our desire to control our lives.

Its hard but it can be done. Just ask Miss I-Cant-Surrender-Everything-to-Godme. Once I did it and saw the benefits from it, I was hooked on the only Stronghold in my life now, Almighty God. Im glad His ways are not my ways and His thoughts are not my thoughts. Thank goodness for that, cause this world would be a plum mess if it were left up to me. At the end of this study, you will be able to say with conviction, All to Jesus I Surrender.

Thelma Wells

Are you familiar with the story The Emperors New Clothes? Two cunning con artists are able to fleece an entire nation because nobody wants to look foolish. They set themselves up as master tailors and offer to create a new suit of clothes for the emperor. The emperor, being a trifle vain, is enormously pleased at the prospect of new fineryuntil the first fitting. With a knowing gleam in their eyes, the conniving tailors display their handiwork, made from a most remarkable fabric. This cloth is so fine, so rare, so miraculously wrought that only the best of men can see it. Those who are unable to see it are fools, unworthy of the position they hold. The emperor is stunned! Hed never considered himself a fool, but for the life of him he cannot see a thing in the tailors hands. And so he pretends he can see what the others claim to hold. And so do all his friends and associates, for no one wants to seem a fool!

The suit of clothes is then completed, and the emperor agrees to parade through the land, showing off his new attire. But in the end, the truth comes out. There is no cloth. There are no clothes. Everyone has been pretending to see what was not there to begin with, rather than stand out as the only one who could not see.

Have you ever had a secret suspicion that youre missing out on something important in your Christian walk? This believer or that believer will talk about their walk of faith with words like vibrant, intimate, and personal. Their glowing description of their relationship with the divine makes you wonder if youre doing something wrong. Oh, you have faith. You do love God. But to call your dealings with the Lord vibrant would be going a little too far. Youre not sure what to expect, but you know its not this. But who wants to look foolish? If everyone else says their Christian life is so intimate and personal, ours had better be, too. So we all use the same words. We all nod with understanding when a friend shares about Gods working in their hearts. But we wonder why God seems more an acquaintance than a friend to us.