It's really not glamorous at all.

When you finally reach that place of zero and submit your whole being to God get ready for immense pain and immense joy.

Oh and remember, joy may not always look like the joy you want or think you need. It may look like pockets of peace in the throws of hardship or an occasional laugh or bouts of tears. Soul satisfying joy will never be what you expect.

When you submit:

He will cause you to hate most of the things you thought were really important. He will cause you to take the small things you thought were trivial really seriously.

And the truly trivial things, He will show you are so worthless you won't even know who you are anymore.

He will change your so-called deep hopes into vicious desires. Desires that will sometimes cause you to want to end your life.

He will bring you through a period of obscurity that will cause you to be so alone. A loneliness that thrusts you closer and closer unto Him and allows you to put people you held so dear into their rightful places. Obscurity that causes you to heave in longing for release which will eventually produce fruit that lasts.

When you live in His will, your plans will mean nothing. Your plans will be reckoned with a series of closed doors and painful waiting. Waiting that will involve patience that requires a God to sustain.

He will bring you face to face with your ugliest depravity. With things you thought you were above, but really aren't. With issues you thought you dealt with, but require much more healing from the Other side.

Bearing fruit will look totally different from what you expect. In fact, He will change expectations into obedience. He will change planning into prayer. He will change worry into groans, groans in the spirit.

You won't any longer know the meaning of pride because you will be too busy on your knees in desperate humility, longing for relief, for some sort of affirmation that says you are loved and not alone.

Your idea of fair will be turned upside down. Many times you will get the short end of the stick, the heavier burden, the trials, while others coast. Because when you submit to Him, He actually wants the control so when He gives you the burden, He actually gives it to Himself.

Be careful what you pray for because He will turn your so-called deepest prayers into covenant. A covenant that will cost you your whole life, your control, your human intellect, your logic, your reason.

He will allow you to feel self-hatred and the criticism of others so that you may know His suffering and be delivered from it.

He will cause you to fail so hugely that never again will you think yourself so great. He will show you that your so-called strengths actually amount to mediocrity. That your weaknesses are far more pervasive than you thought. That the only identity you can really bank on is the one He gives you.

He will cause the things of this world to be so truly distasteful that you pray for death. Not suicide. But death to the things of this world so that your bodily desires can be shut off so your internal conflict ends. So you can have at least an hour of peace in your spirit.

He will cause some of your greatest fears to be realized, only to show you how much bigger He is than your fears and inadequacies.

Once you submit, you will live a dangerous life. Safety is no longer an option. Uncertainty is the only certainty. You will lose everything you held dear so it can be returned to you a hundred fold.

All the parts of your identity you really like or you allowed to define you will be stripped away so that you will be left with nothing but the name "Redeemed" or "Beloved."

You will be destroyed, only to be rebuilt indestructible.

So, I will no longer tell you that living a life for God is easy. I won't tell you that it will solve all your problems or bring immediate answers to your prayers because in many cases it won't. It may not bring whole contentment that others say it will right away or even in your lifetime.

However,

What it will do is give you hope beyond your own understanding, courage beyond your own ability, love beyond your own compassion.

It will cause us to not just coast through life and be a number, a statistic.

It will cause you to be broken unto others so that lives maybe changed, God may be glorified and your joy may be made complete.

How so?

I have no idea. But I have faith.

Is it worth it?

Sure.

It is easy?

Never.

Is God with you throughout?

Always.

What do I know?

There's no turning back now.