🌸 What Am I Still Holding?

Scripture

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.” — Psalm 139:23 (KJV)

There are prayers I can pray rather easily.

“Lord, protect my family.”

“Lord, guide me.”

“Lord, open the right doors.”

“Lord, bless the people I love.”

But there is another prayer that feels different.

Lord, show me what I have not surrendered to You.

That has been on my heart.

Not what someone else needs to change.
Not what I wish God would fix around me.

What am I still holding?

Because I can love God, pray, read His Word, serve, encourage other people—and still have places in my life where my hands are tightly closed.

Sometimes it is a person.

We say we have given our children to God, but we are still trying to control every decision, protect them from every consequence and write the ending of their story.

Sometimes it is a marriage or another family relationship. We have already decided what healing should look like, what the other person needs to do and how God needs to fix it.

Sometimes it is work. We ask God to lead while quietly hoping He leads us exactly where we have already decided we want to go.

And sometimes what we are holding is not something precious.

Sometimes it is something God has already been asking us to put down.

The eating habits we keep excusing.

The relationship we know does not honor Him.

The need to stay busy because being still makes us uncomfortable.

The conversation that becomes gossip, even though we called it concern.

The resentment we keep rehearsing.

The need to be right.

The need to be needed.

The need to control.

And perhaps that is why surrender can be so difficult.

We usually have a reason for holding on.

Fear.

Love.

Comfort.

Loneliness.

Habit.

Pride.

Uncertainty.

Sometimes we are afraid of what God might ask us to release. Sometimes we are afraid of what will happen once we no longer have our hands on it.

But surrender is not telling God something He does not already know.

It is opening our hands before the One who already knows what is in them.

I am learning that surrender is not one grand prayer we pray once and never have to revisit.

There are things I gave God yesterday that I reached for again this morning.

So perhaps today's prayer does not need to be complicated.

Father, show me my closed hands.

Show me where I am asking You to lead while still insisting on my own way.

Show me what I have renamed, justified or become comfortable carrying.

Show me the people and outcomes I am trying to control.

And give me enough trust in You to loosen my grip.

Not because I do not care.

Because I believe You care even more.

🌸 The MOMENT

Take a quiet minute today and ask yourself:

What am I still holding that I need to surrender to God?

Do not answer for your spouse.

Do not answer for your child.

Do not answer for the person whose choices have been frustrating you.

Answer for you.

Then take it to your Father exactly as it is.

You do not need polished words.

You may simply need an open hand.

🙏 Prayer

Father, I surrender to You what I have been trying to manage without You, what I have been afraid to release to You, and what I already know You have asked me to put down. Search my heart. Show me what I cannot see and what I have chosen not to see. Teach me to trust You with my children, my marriage, my relationships, my work, my habits, my desires, my future—and myself. I do not want to give You only the parts of my life that are easy to surrender. I want You to have all of me. Help me open my hands. In Jesus' name, Amen.

MOMENT: Surrender is not caring less. It is trusting God more.

Pause. Pray. Open your hands. Trust.

❤️ Every MOMENT Matters.

— Monica Lynne Wilkins
MOMENT Moms™
MOMENTMoms.org