A Word from the Lord | Surrendering to Him in Difficult Times

How do you truly surrender to the Lord during difficult times or when you don’t get the results you’ve…

• Prayed for?
• Asked for?
• Believed for?

We all go through times when it is difficult to truly surrender to God. We must choose to trust Him and His ways, knowing they are better and higher than ours. 

This is a process of handing the situation over to Him moment after moment, day after day. In challenging circumstances, this process takes seasons, but over time, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and mind, bringing you to a place of full surrender. 

Join Rabbi Curt Landry as he takes you on a personal journey of surrender that impacted him greatly and others around him. Discover how he was able to receive the peace of God. 

It all started with receiving a word from the Lord…

Transcription from Podcast (Revised for Readability)

Shalom, Rabbi Curt Landry here with Ancient Principles, Kingdom Authority.

Introduction

I want to talk to you about something that all believers struggle with—surrender. 

In the last podcast, we talked about hope deferred. We discovered that when your hope is deferred, the heart grows sick because you feel disconnected from the tree of life. In other words, no sap, nutrition, or energy is going to and through you. 

Yet, in the surrender process, when there is no experience of God’s presence or an experience of the results of what you…

• Prayed for
• Asked for
• Believed for

When you are in a wilderness or dry time, and the Lord prompts you to surrender to the process, you need a word from the Lord. 

• And I’m going to bring that word to help and comfort you if you’re one of those waiting on something the Lord’s promise and it hasn’t manifested, or you don’t even see it on the horizon.

Here’s What to Do in the Waiting Wilderness Season of Surrender

We are called to live a surrendered lifestyle, constantly crucifying our flesh and coming into agreement with the Holy Spirit that lives within us. I want to share a real example where Believers lived to testify after a difficult surrender. 

My Personal Story of Surrender

Christie and I have a spiritual son who got sick with cancer and, in his 30s, passed away. And everyone was believing for him to be completely and totally healed. And people we know, great people of faith, people with healing gifts, came and prayed and believed, and we had prophetic words that he would live, and then he passed away.

And so, how do you make that adjustment to surrender the situation? How do you surrender to God’s choice of the situation that he’s not here? 

Many of us laid hands, prayed, believed, and prophesied that he was going to live, and then, after he passed, we thought… 

• “Is God’s word not true?”
• “Are we false prophets?”
• “Did we do it wrong?”

All these questions come up. In ministry, this was probably one of the most difficult things we have ever been through, where we had to surrender to the Lord, trusting that the Lord knew better than we did. 

But you must realize that through the grieving process, and all the adjustments of somebody that is really active in your life and you have to fill those roles and responsibilities and the things that they used to do, that we had to get to a place where we were at peace. 

This has been about three years, but everybody’s now at peace with God’s choice. But how did we get there?

Hear a Word from the Lord

We really had to hear a word from the Lord. And probably one of the most powerful things that happened to me personally and others who are seers in the spiritual realm is that we saw this individual in the Courts of Heaven in the great cloud of witnesses. I’ve seen him there three times in the Courts of Heaven. 

And I can remember the first time. He was healthy and robust, and he just shined with this glory and this peace. Sometimes you must wait for that healing of the grieving process to happen. You have to go through that to have peace. So you have to just go through a season.

And for me, with this, it was about a two-year season where I just had to surrender and say, “Lord, I’m choosing not to make a choice of what I think about this. I’m going to choose to trust You. I will surrender my right to know why it went this way.” So that was the surrender. And that was the surrender for Christie and this young man’s parents.

Choose Not to Walk Away from God

Some people walk away from God when He is asking them to surrender the situation to Him. In my situation, some people could have said, “God doesn’t heal today. He’s passed away, and I want to walk away.” 

Now I can tell you that in this situation, many people knew this young man and loved him, but nobody went down that road. But after we started having multiple visions and seeing him there, the Lord told me… 

• “Do you want to know? Do you want to know what happened?” And I said, “Yes, Lord!” Listen, I surrendered my right to know, but I want to know what happened with this young man.

So I was with this young man, and I had forgotten something the Lord reminded me of… I was there almost every day within the five days before he passed. And I remember one day we came in to visit a day or two before he actually passed, and he was just shining. 

Now, he had lost a bunch of weight. He was sick. He was jaundiced, all the things you do in hospice care. But I’m telling you, he never, and I’ve known him most of his life, he never looked more alive even though his body was sick because he was full of the presence of God.

And I had forgotten that, and the Lord said, “Remember that day when you came?” I thought, yes, I came, and I remember I went into his bedroom, and I asked him how he was doing. And he wouldn’t say anything. He just smiled at me. And I knew it in the inner witness because I had a similar experience when I got saved from being with Jesus. And I felt that same way when I got saved in the bathtub. 

And I asked him, I said, “Did Jesus come?” And he just shook his head up and down and said yes. And he goes, “And he’s got this.”

He wasn’t talking to me because he hadn’t the strength to speak, but he was so in the glory that the glory was speaking louder than any words he could articulate. And the Lord told me this. He said, and this was years later like this, he said, “I gave this young man a choice that day. I can miraculously heal you, or you can come and be with Me.”

And he chose to be with the Lord because he was so radiating the glory and the power of God that the miracle of everything healing in his body was there, but the love of God was so strong.

And I’ve had this happen with a couple of other people once they have been with Jesus. This happened with my dad’s wife, Nana. We went down to Florida. The same thing happened. Went into the room. Here she is. She wasn’t doing well, and she looked like she was healed and in the glory. And she said, “I love Him so much.” And I said to Nana, “You were talking about my dad?” She said, “No, Him.” 

She says, “Please tell your father I told Him I want to be with Him now.” And she passed the next day. And with this young man, he passed the next day.

So I had to go for two years with this situation where I had to surrender my right even as a minister, as this young man’s rabbi and a spiritual father; I had to surrender for two years and come to say, “Lord, I don’t know.” 

And now I know because when I see him in the Courts of Heaven, in the great cloud of witnesses, he’s not only got the same glow that he had that day but filled out his face. He’s young. He’s robust. He’s got that Shekinah glory. I saw him standing next to one of my heroes, the Apostle Paul, and I’ve seen him with King David.

And I know why, because I was his rabbi, why he chose to go and not stay. And that brought peace. And that’s why all of us involved with this are at peace now, because we were able to surrender our right to the Lord to say, “I don’t look for an answer. I’m looking to You. You’re the only answer.” 

So I never sought the answer, but after seeking Him one day, I just surrendered. And when you surrender, you surrender everything to Him because you trust Him.

Surrendering to Him is Understanding Your Identity

Why is surrender such an important part of understanding your identity? Romans 6:6. Paul says, “…knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

So I received an inner healing when I surrendered to God the loss of my mom. I lost my mother at 22 years old. I was never angrier at God. I wasn’t saved. She was my hero, my best friend. And at 22 years old, she’s gone. And she received the Lord, and I didn’t understand that. She told me that she was right with God. She said, “And I trust you with the family,” because I was the firstborn son and all that type of stuff. But, well, I was angry for a long time until I got saved and surrendered.

So when my old man, the angry young man from Los Angeles who wanted to go to the hospital in my mind and grab one of the doctors and just beat the tar out of him, I realized those doctors did the best they could do. It was her time, but I missed her so much. 

But when you put away the sin of pride, which says, “I can’t surrender, I have to know,” when you demand answers from God, and you demand understanding without seeking to labor for it, then pride is the sin that separates you from ever finding your peace. 

Pride is the old you, not the new you. Your new identity is about surrendering to the Lord and putting to death pride.

And I have great peace now because I’ve seen my mother in that great cloud of witnesses, one of my best cheerleaders in Heaven. And I have great peace because I don’t fear death. After all, we’re all going to instantly be with the ones we’ve lost that are saved at our last breath. That’s why it’s so crucial that you are saved.

Forgiveness is a Battle in Surrendering to Him

Why is forgiveness such a battle in surrender, and why is it important for us to forgive? Well, you can get angry at God. I’ve been angry at God. But I try not to stay there. If I don’t understand something, I must work through it, surrendering to Him.

But you don’t want to stay angry at God or anybody else. You have to operate in forgiveness. Because forgiveness brings you back to that place where you can have that sound mind—peace. But if you’re operating in revenge and anger and wrath, thinking, “They did this to me, and now I want to get back at them,” you get nowhere.

I’ve seen forgiveness in Israel when a family has lost a soldier, and they choose to forgive the enemy and walk in that forgiveness, and I watch the peace come into the household. I’ve done enough pastoring over the years to know that forgiveness, surrendering of answers, and trusting God are the only real healing for grief.

How Not Surrendering Leaves Us Open to Attacks

When we don’t walk in full surrender to the finished work of the cross as a daily act of devotion, we open ourselves up for attack from the enemy. Life’s circumstances teach us if we don’t allow the Word to prune us. 

The process of surrender isn’t a sprint. Spiritual life is not a sprint. It’s a marathon. This is a long haul. You have to prepare yourself like an athlete. That’s what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:27. Train like an athlete, get your body under control, and preach the gospel to others and myself. 

Close doors to attacks by…

• Seeking to Lord daily
• Asking Him to show you anything that would stop you from doing what He has called you to do
• Confess it 

I’m careful not to share my personal devotional life because anyone says, “Well, if that worked for him, then I’ll just do that.” You need to ask the Lord what your devotional time looks like.  I get a cup of coffee and spend time every day with the Lord, most of which is seeking the Lord. I ask, “Lord, what do you want me to do this day? What are you doing?”

• Surrender your day to Him, asking Him to protect you in whatever your assignment is, which helps to close doors to attacks. 

• Ask God, “What’s in me, if known or unknown, that would contaminate me from doing the assignment You have given me today? Search me or know me, Lord. Reveal anything not of You in me.” 

• Then I confess whatever He has revealed to Him. 

This is just me in my office, where I fellowship with the Lord at the house. And I ask the Lord to forgive me, and He does. It’s like Moses with the children of Israel in the desert. And God said, “I remember that you’re but flesh. I’m disappointed, but I understand that you’re just flesh.” The pride of taking yourself too seriously can make surrender difficult. 

Regarding how to walk in full surrender to the finished work of the cross, let me say it this way…

• We’ll never walk totally in the finished work of the cross until we meet Yeshua face to face. It’s so exponential, so big. It’s like when the Lord says He loves us like the sands of the sea, that’s a good example. 
• God’s devotion to us is like the sands of the sea. Man, just spend a little time at the beach, and you just look at one beach, and if you think of all the sand of the whole earth, that’s not comprehendible. 

So the finished work of the cross is a journey. And we have books and workmanship in Heaven, according to the book of Ephesians. And I think our goal is to hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

The Key to Surrendering to Him in Difficult Times

And I think the key to surrender is this prayer…

• “Lord, I surrender to Your will and Your calling in my life. My hope and glory is the transformation of my identity of Christ in me. Even though I’ll have hope deferred at times and my heart might grow sick, I will not quit climbing the mountain of my identity in You because You paid for me. You called me. You chose me. And I decree and declare right now that You are the author and the finisher of my faith. And I trust that You know what You got when You called me, but I need Your help. I don’t trust me, Lord, and I don’t trust other people. I can work with other people. I can learn from other people. I can even submit to other people. But, Lord, ultimately, my only 100% trust is in You, and I trust that fact that You called me and chose me, and I trust You to finish the work You started in me. So, Lord, search me and know me, for I desire that truth in my inward part, that I might bring honor and glory to You. And, Lord, it’s my desire and my will with these ancient principles and kingdom authority that I’ll hear, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.'”

God bless you. We’ll see you in the next podcast. Shalom.

Bio

Curt Landry, founder of Curt Landry Ministries, and his wife, Christie, travel extensively, preaching and teaching about the Jewish roots of the Christian faith. Together, their passion is to empower families to live and leave Kingdom legacies and understand their own personal heritage.