Guest Speaker Kyra on Surrendering to Christ

Hi everyone! First off, Please comment below and share! Today I have another guest speaker on my blog for you! I know I said I would release them on the first of each month but I didn't want to wait any longer so here it is! The speaker is my friend named Kyra, who is one of the holiest and inspiring people I know and I am very honored to have her speak on my blog! I have mentioned Kyra a few times on my blog anonymously and she is the one who inspired me to find my life motto. So thanks, Kyra! And thanks for writing something on my blog! So here is what Kyra has to say, everyone!

“To think you can love God without being changed by Him, is to think you can jump into the ocean and not get wet. To really love Him, you must understand that your life is going to be wrecked by Him, and built again into something beautiful, something lasting.” -T.B. LaBerge

Scary, isn’t it? The fear, confusion, and anxiety we feel reading this quote are what point us directly to our utter brokenness and absence of strength without God. We then contemplate how there could be some power, some being, or some “person” in existence that could break us and raise us into the most astounding creatures one could imagine. And in that little sliver of hope that God might actually be able to perform this wonder out of the nothingness of ourselves, we find the miraculous gift of faith.

Without faith in humility, we are incapable of being anything close to what God calls us to. We can only dream about what we might become with the smallest bit of faith. The branches, He calls us. Growing slowly in the direction of the brightest light, we thrive. In His image, we breathe. For His glory, we fight! Knowing little about ourselves and God and His capacity for love, we give Him a piece of ourselves when we believe in the unseen. We call it faith, yet we can’t fully describe how it works or why we are worthy to even interact with our God.

He tells us that even faith the size of a small mustard seed can move a mountain (Matthew 17:20). Why is it so hard, then? We fail to bear witness to His love because of the fear that we might be different. We follow the crowds, identifying ourselves with St. Peter. We fall to sin thinking it’ll bring us something more. Hidden sin is what Satan tempts us most deeply with. He takes our innocence and brings what seems like pleasure into our hearts, tearing us apart bit by bit. Indifference and mediocrity are the darkest temptations of the evil one.

We strive for greatness in the Kingdom of Heaven. We strive to be among the holiest of the saints, like God in all things. But what is our motivation? Do we aim to be our holiest when nobody is watching? Or is it when the world is there to witness and build up our pride muscle, giving us that little sense of accomplishment and acceptance? We like to show the world our faith. Yet in His darkest moments, fighting the most intense spiritual warfare, person on person with Satan, Christ reminds us that “My Kingdom does not belong to this world (John 18:36).” Boom. Roasted. Now that’s a humility slap if I’ve ever seen one.

We try to leave an impression, a watermark, a fingerprint on the world, marking how holy we live our lives. In vain, we secretly hope to gain praise for the time we spent in prayer, for how well we paid attention in Mass, for how patient we were. Why is it so much easier to fervently pray when others are next to us, silently doing the same? On the other hand, how many times do we lay in bed at night and reflect on our day, realizing how much we rejected Christ during the day? Go to sleep, he tells us. Prayer’s a myth, he tells us. Yet in our hearts, we know it’s Satan again. Prayer slips our mind as we doze off, pouring out the fuel for the furnace of our faith. The fire dims slowly, and we let it. Our broken nature overtakes us, and we let Satan persuade us to wait another day until we surrender again to Christ.

“Prayer when it’s difficult is worth a great deal more in the Kingdom of Heaven (Mathers).” Christ witnesses our struggle and pours out His love for this reason. When we tumble down Satan’s hill of temptation and get bleeding scrapes and bruises, He comes with a first-aid kit called mercy. Come to me, He calls. Welcome my child, hold my hand. We question why we are worthy of this, yet we fall on Him with nowhere else to go. We grab onto His hand and interlock our fingers in His, feeling safe. A refuge for the broken is His hand. We walk along, and He breathes life into us. This intimacy we desire with our Father binds us together in the fullness of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty: the Church. We are the living, breathing, fighting Church by our unified faith. As we reach out our little hand to grasp His, our faith abounds.

Run to me, He calls us. Always I am with you, my child. You are my warrior, He pleads, drop it and run to me. His cross is the graveyard for our sins. He calls us to leave everything at the foot of the cross and be transformed into reflections of Him. Whether or not to become this best version of ourselves is what we fight. This choice is made day by day as we encounter the temptations of the devil. Man, he knows us well. Christ calls us to step down from the entitlement we think we deserve and fall on Him for every decision. Furthermore, we must know where the devil comes into our lives and where we continuously submit to his calling over God’s. We can’t fight an unknown enemy, right?

Run so as to win (1 Cor. 9:24). Find Christ on His cross in your life and bring your struggles, pain, darkness, doubt to the foot of that cross, and run! Jesus knows. It’s almost like a funeral where flowers are placed on the casket and everyone leaves that funeral with a vivid memory of that lost life. Let your struggles be your flower and let the casket be the cross. Only allow the flower bud to be visible and let the thorns change you. Walk away from Christ’s death with a personification of Him in yourself! Leave your brokenness behind like He left the world’s sin behind. Let Christ change you. Take His mercy and run with it, without looking back. Be the reflection of Christ from the crucifixion to the world. Be a light. Let your vision of sainthood drive your decisions day by day. Let Him live in you. Rise with Christ in the renewal of your soul. Let Him love you and unceasingly love Him back. Leave it and run.

We hear this call, yet we are confused as to what to take from it. Where do we start? Pray, they tell us. But how? We always hear stories about how God personally speaks to people, yet all we hear is our own thoughts fighting against us. Our souls are weak without fervent prayer. The devil preys on us as we feel the desire to pray. And right when we are about to step on the edge of the cliff and fall into a life dedicated to Him alone, and Satan comes to build a fence to hold us back. We feel superficially safe, resisting discomfort. In our hearts, we know to fight him with the Mass, the Rosary, Sacred Scripture. And what he hates the most is silence. We know to fight him with silence. A warrior of silence He was, and reflections of Him we are called to be.

*Mary, thank you so much for giving me this opportunity! You are amazing! I enjoyed praying through this and writing down what came to me. All for and in His glory. Readers, feel free to leave any questions or comments below! Thank you and I am praying for you. -Kyra