Do you feel like God is calling you to people or discipleship, but letting people in isn’t exactly your strong suit? How can God possibly be asking you to live a life connected to community knowing the private lifestyle you prefer? If this is you, I can’t wait for us to chat. In this post, learn how full surrender to God gives us grace to build life-giving connections and not just live out God’s call on our life – but actually enjoy it!
Until recently, whenever I would get an instruction from God, I would run off to do what he said. It’s not until I would get frustrated or burnt out that I would come back to God and ask: how am I supposed to do this? I could have saved myself a ton of time and effort if I had asked the how before attempting the what. And what I recently learned is that it’s this kind of full dependency on God – trusting him with the entire process – that yields the grace we need to accomplish what he asks. Partial dependency yields partial grace. That’s a recipe for burnout.
However, when we live a lifestyle dependent on God, he carries the weight of what He’s asked us to do, allowing our strength to be maximized. And anything God asks us to do is going to require His strength to do it. If God has given you an instruction, whether you deem it big or small, it’s conducive to His call on your life. It’s not a line item on a set of tasks you’re to accomplish. It’s a demand on the fullness of who you are. God’s call on our life is just that… a call on our entire life.
In this post, I share how God used my recurring battle with being social to reveal how I’m not only called to people, but graced for it. If you feel drawn to people, whether reluctantly or not, I hope this encourages you to explore God’s call on your life with a new perspective.
“I’ve called you, but I need you to depend on Me daily for the grace to walk out your call.”
I am to depend on God continuously, understanding that He is an ever present help. Not just on Sunday. Not when I feel like it. Not only before starting my day.
Surrender isn’t just saying yes to God’s plan — it’s saying yes throughout God’s plan. It’s trusting Him with our purpose as well as with our kids, our pace, and our peace. All the things.
And when we finally let go, we find that God is holding everything together better than we ever could.
That’s when I realized that surrender isn’t this agreement I make occasionally as I cross the bridges of life. It’s an active dependence on God all the time. From the moment I wake up, to every quiet stand-still of my day, to even the busy moments within a crowd… I must be willing to tap in with God. So I started giving this a try – not as a means of getting an answered prayer or specific direction. Simply as a daughter depending on the presence of her dad, day in and day out. And something remarkable happened.
Peace under pressure flows when you trust God with the things you’re trying to control.
Living from Grace, Not Grind
This past weekend, I tackled all my usual to-do’s: errands, church, parenting, ministry. But this time, something was different. Usually, I end up exhausted, pouring from an empty cup. But at the end of the weekend, I realized I wasn’t drained. I wasn’t worn out. I actually enjoyed it all.
When I asked God what made this weekend so different, He whispered:
“This is what it feels like to live surrendered. You embraced your need for Me no matter how strong you felt, and I gave you the strength to do everything — without striving.”
That hit me deep. Because I had been so used to doing for God that I missed the opportunity of doing with God.
And the difference is everything. It’s the difference between burnout and peace. Between enduring and enjoying. Between self-effort and supernatural ease. Life felt effortlessly enjoyable. And I want more of that!
God doesn’t just call you to serve — He empowers you to enjoy serving.
Patterns, Peace, and Purpose
In prayer, God began to show me a pattern: I’ve always been surrounded by people.
Big family. Different schools. Different cities. Different churches. And through it all, I’ve learned how to thrive — even when the dynamics of a community left me feeling more neglected than seen.
What did this have to do with me surrendering to God? Well, I struggled to trust God with areas of my life that I’d learned to protect myself from. And for decades, I’d seen peopling as a necessary evil, something to be endured. So you can imagine how hard life became as my community naturally grew. How would I be a good mom, friend, servant in my community if I have an issue with getting close to or trusting people? God was calling me to a lifestyle that I’d worked hard to avoid, and now the tension of the two extremes required me to make a decision.
My resistance to people was a coping mechanism, and quite frankly, a strategy of the enemy to keep me from ever discovering my calling. Before ever getting to this world, God called me to people. He graced me for it. And I would never experience that grace without surrendering my heart… not to the call itself, but to the God who made the call. In trusting Him, I can rest in His divine enablement to walk this call out.
In prayer about this, God said: “You’ve been graced for people. But you’ve tried to love them in your own strength. The grace is there — but it only flows through surrender.”
It made sense. The same connections and responsibilities that drained me before were now life-giving because I wasn’t carrying them alone.
And I realized something powerful — the enemy knew this all along. He attacked my confidence in connecting with others because he knew my healing and my calling were both tied to people.
Learning to depend on God is how you go from enduring your calling to enjoying it.
Surrender isn’t giving up; it’s giving in to grace.
It’s not weakness — it’s wisdom.
Because when you finally stop trying to do everything, you’ll see that God has already gone before you, done the work, and is ready to carry you through every step. And that, my friend, is being graced for the walk.
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