1: Submitting

Each month I am picking a quality or Christlike characteristic and exploring it in more depth. I chose January's quite specifically because it is the beginning of knowing God. 

“The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.” 

My friend Elder Maxwell knows a lot about being submissive, which is my focus this month. 

Neal A. Maxwell's talk "Willing to Submit." 

"It is so easy to be halfhearted, but this only produces half the growth, half the blessings, and just half a life, really, with more bud than blossom.

A superficial view of this life, therefore, will not do, lest we mistakenly speak of this mortal experience only as coming here to get a body, as if we were merely picking up a suit at the cleaners. Or, lest we casually recite how we have come here to be proved, as if a few brisk push-ups and deep knee bends would do.

Spiritual submissiveness means, instead, community and communion as the mind and the heart become settled. We then spend much less time deciding, and much more time serving; otherwise, the more hesitation, the less inspiration.

Yielding one’s heart to God signals the last stage in our spiritual development. Only then are we beginning to be fully useful to God! How can we sincerely pray to be an instrument in His hands if the instrument seeks to do the instructing?

Yet we need to break free of our old selves—the provincial, constraining, and complaining selves—and become susceptible to the shaping of the Lord."

I LOVE this. January is the perfect time to break free of our old selves. I also like how complaining was mentioned; real desire eliminates room to complain. And yes, it's easy to say "Oh I know God, He gets me. He knows me and He knows where I want to go. I've already submitted to Him because I totally will do whatever He wants! Ya! He knows who I am and that's what matters." 

But there's more to it than that. When we decide to obey Him, we decide to obey all He has given us: prophets, commandments, law of tithing and fasting, scripture study, Family Home Evening, etc. We cannot pick and choose what we obey in this gospel, no matter how much God knows us. That does not mean that we swallow everything we're taught in Sunday School, but it does mean that we dive into the waters of God instead of putting our feet in and calling it good. The gospel does not mold itself to you and however you want to live it; you mold yourself to God and His ways ... all of them. 

submissive

adj. unresistingly or humbly obedient

willing to obey someone else

accommodating

dutiful 

meek

passive

patient

subdued

tame

yielding

submit 

n. to yield or surrender to the will or authority of another

to subject to a condition or process

accept

agree

defer

surrender

bend

bow

obey

succumb

How is it done? I think the first step is telling God that we want to submit; and we must truly mean it. When He knows that it is our will that He should have our will, He will help us even more to learn how to give that up. He will strengthen our spiritual ears. He will allow us more revelation to see if we are listening. He will test us. He will answer us, if we let Him.