3 Traits To Help You Surrender To God
Why is lifting hands an act of worship?
People lift their hands in various situations for a variety of reasons. Here are a few examples:
– To celebrate. People often lift their hands in the air as a gesture of triumph during celebrations such as scoring a goal in sports, winning a competition, or achieving a milestone.
– To acknowledge. People raise their hands to greet or acknowledge someone, attract someone’s attention, or respond to being called or recognized by name.
– To surrender. Raising hands can be a symbolic gesture of surrender, indicating submission or compliance to another. It’s an act to communicate that a person poses no threat.
– To seek assistance. Raising a hand is a way to signal that a person has a question, needs help, or seeks assistance.
Hands can be used to show love and affection or to hurt others.
Our hands are God-given tools we can use to build or create (click here to learn more about God’s unlimited power and provision to us in our time of need). On the other hand (pun intended), Solomon writes this: “Fools fold their idle hands, leading them to ruin” (Ecclesiastes 4:5).
We lift our hands to many things in this world, but only one is worthy of all worship.
Lifting our hands is a sign that we surrender, acknowledge, celebrate, seek assistance from, and honor the name above all names, Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
The Psalmist wrote in Psalm 24:3-4,
“Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in his holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.”
Here are three essential traits that will keep your life surrendered to God:
1) Clean hands.
Clean hands represent being innocent or having nothing hidden. In other words, don’t try to hide anything from God because nothing is hidden.
2) Pure heart.
A pure heart represents the right motivation. We need to check our heart’s motivation for why we do what we do. Is it to honor God or to bring attention to ourselves?
A pure heart breeds pure intentions to honor God.
3) Confidence in God alone.
Not trusting in an idol or swearing by a false god is a caution to not make the good things in life become the ultimate things. We must guard against placing our confidence in artificial things of this world like money, opportunities, relationships, etc. Instead, we must put our confidence in the Lord who created us.
Living this way can only be accomplished by surrendering your life to Jesus Christ and receiving his grace. Here’s more on what it actually means to know Jesus, believe in Jesus, and live like Jesus.
The simple act of lifting our hands in worship, whether in a gathering or the privacy of our homes, signals to our hearts and minds that we are surrendering our lives to Jesus. May we guard our hearts from going down the path of living a self-centered life by following the instructions of the Psalmist,
“Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, And bless the Lord” (Psalm 134:2).