Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.

Luke 1:38

There is a big difference between sacrifice and surrender.

When you choose to sacrifice, you are still in charge. When you choose to surrender, you are saying, "God is in charge". To sacrifice is to give "a bit of yourself" until you feel you have nothing more to give, but to surrender is to lose yourself entirely and completely to God.

Most of us prefer to sacrifice when God calls us to surrender. This comes from a fear of losing out our freedom to God and becoming a minion for Him. Our surrounding culture teaches us to value our freedom, but it doesn't tell us that God is the first source of our freedom. As such, when we refuse to surrender to God, we are not preserving our freedom but actually losing it.

Surrendering to God is to love Him unreservedly as He unreservedly loves us.

Only sons and daughters know this joy of true surrendering. It reveals and reflects an authentic friendship and relationship with the Father. If we do struggle in this area, it is not because God is demanding too much from us, but it is an identity problem. That is, we have forgotten who we are in Christ, and sadder still, we can't remember what we have through Christ. Then the Christian life is about living up to God's expectations, and not living in the light of our identity and inheritance in Christ".

Knowing that she was highly favoured by God through the spoken word of the Angel Gabriel, Mary became the maidservant of the Lord by grace. In the same way, our attitude and actions towards God correspond to our understanding of grace.

The prayer of Mary was simple, but powerful.

When she prayed, "Let it be to me according to your word", she was actually saying "Lord, here I am — do your best in my life".

When Mary willingly surrendered herself to God, she was choosing to live her life through God's eye and that allowed God to work with her and bring her to where she should be. Pray that you will echo the same willingness and resolve for God to do His perfect work in and through you.