1 Samuel 7:9-10 So Samuel took a young lamb and offered it to the Lord as a whole burnt offering. He pleaded with the Lord to help Israel, and the Lord answered him. Just as Samuel was sacrificing the burnt offering, the Philistines arrived to attack Israel. But the Lord spoke with a mighty voice of thunder from heaven that day, and the Philistines were thrown into such confusion that the Israelites defeated them. (NLT)

Samuel offered the burnt offering as a form of surrender to God. Surrendering simply means to stop resisting God (trying to do things our ways) and submitting to the Lord’s authority.

The intriguing part is that sometimes when we sacrifice our lives to God, we still think that God will come through our ways. We always want God to do things based on our mindsets or how we have seen other people grow around us. 

However, the Bible says in 1 corinthians 2:9 that: what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him. 

God is bigger than our minds, that’s why instead of spending time suggesting to Him what Jesus should do for us we should instead TRUST Him and believe that God’s way is better than our desires! It does not mean being quiet in your prayers because we see that Samuel prayed and pleaded to the Lord with trust and repentance. Nevertheless, Samuel had no idea what God would do, but he trusted that God knew what was best. 

This is the attitude I pray we will all have in this New Year; being expectant for miracles that we have never seen before. Let’s also pray to God with honest and repent hearts as we trust that God’s way is the best!

Jesus is our Ebenezer; He wants to help us!