I can do all things. I truly believe that. Give me a problem, I can solve it. Give me a challenge, I overcome it. Whatever you need, I can get it done, maybe not right away – but best believe I will find a way. And you will be impressed.

I pride myself on that, it’s my super power. Nothing is impossible for me. I’m an analyst and a strategist – If it can be done, I can do it and I will.

When I first quit my job to embark on a career in journalism, I had a plan and a strategy and a little bit of faith. In my mind, there was no way I could fail especially since I fasted and prayed and knew for sure that what I was about to do was what God wanted me to do.

So I quit my job and put my plan into action. And it failed. All of it.

Every plan I made, every strategy I came up with to remedy my situation turned into ashes. I looked around and couldn’t believe what was happening to me. Had God deceived me? Nothing was working, even the things that should have worked because they were simple common sense foolproof things – those failed too.

I felt like my life ended but I didn’t die. I wish I could describe the horror of watching my whole world crumble, crash and shatter to a million pieces yet I was powerless to salvage even a small piece of it. I felt stripped – stripped of all my knowledge and all my power. Before long I was on my knees begging God to come.

I didn’t know it then but the good thing about being weak and powerless is it brings you to the end of yourself. After all my running around, struggling, striving and strategizing God had to bring me to my knees.

There was too much of me and not enough of Him.

I needed to understand that. I spent my whole life running everything – a one woman show. And my relationship with God at that time was the same way. Though I was praying my prayer life looked like this – ‘Here is my prayer list, Lord, these are my plans, bless them. Lord, these are my concerns and this is what I need you to do.’

I saw the life I wanted and I went about creating it but when none of it worked I learned one of my greatest lessons: my life was never mine to “create” – not if I wanted God in it. Before the foundation of the world, God had a purpose and a path for me to follow. My only job was to seek him to find it. If ever anyone needed a lesson in submission – it was me.

However, always true to His word, God delivered and I achieved everything I set out to, times ten – only it was by no plan or effort of mine. What I had in mind pales in comparison to where God actually took me. I wish I had time to tell of all the things that crumbled, that I had to sit back and watch God miraculously piece back together for me. It is nothing short of amazing.

When you truly understand God holds the universe and every human effort is futile without him, you learn to let go and surrender.

Simply learning to ask, “Father what will you have me to do?” yields so much more blessing and peace than “Father, this is what I am about to do.” Asking communicates reverence. It is an acknowledgement that God is in control and that you trust Him to take you wherever he directs. Anything outside of that, and you will start to rely on your own strength and abilities and not God’s. Instead of praying, I was thinking and strategizing. And how arrogant of me? Could my human mind conjure up a plan greater than the omniscient, omnipotent God?

When we surrender to everything to God, he can mold us into who he created us to be, to do what he created us to do so we can have what he says we can have.

We are all here to fulfill God’s plans. God is not here to fulfill our plans. If more of us would understand and accept this, there would be a whole lot more of us living more fulfilled, purpose driven and powerful lives.

Selah.