Sweet Surrender

Ephesians 5:21
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

This is really what the study is about. Obey one another out of a healthy fear for God. This scripture is going to be the staple scripture at the beginning from each study from now on.

Genesis 16:1-10
Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."

"Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"

"I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered.

Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count."

Submit: ‛ânâh (pronounced: aw-naw'):

• The idea of looking down or browbeating; to depress literally or figuratively, transitively or intransitively (in various applications): abase self, afflict (affliction, self), answer, chasten self, deal hardly with, defile, exercise, force, gentleness, humble (self), hurt, ravish, sing, speak, submit self, weaken.

Now, this is interesting. Submit in the OT means to submit self... and humble self. "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." And these other things look like they could fit in there to... but it would just be weird for God to say "exercise her or weaken her", it just sounds weird. This is only the third day and I don't remember if I did a dictionary definition.

I looked and I haven't.

Submit (verb):

• To give over or yield to the power or authority of another (often used reflexively).
• To subject to some kind of treatment or influence.
• To present for the approval, consideration, or decision of another or others.
• To state or urge with deference; suggest or propose (usually fol. by a clause).
• To yield oneself to the power or authority of another.
• To allow oneself to be subjected to some kind of treatment.
• To defer to another's judgment, opinion, decision, etc.

And when you look at this definition... it says so many things. At least a whole lot of stuff comes to mind, since I am to submit myself to God. I am to submit myself to Christ.

I will put together some thoughts on all of this... this is GREAT! Anyway, Johnny Out.

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