You're listening to Encounter, a simple daily podcast of sacred and mindful Christian meditations.

You can listen here, but if you would enjoy being able to search in favorite, forward in journal as you listen,

I encourage you to download the

Encountering Peace mobile app where all the meditations are free, as they should be.

You are no doubt familiar with the Ten Commandments mentioned in Exodus chapter 31. But can you guess how many commands are mentioned throughout the entire Old Testament?

Maybe another 10, 20, 50, 100? Well, there are actually 613. A Jewish rabbi actually counted them all the way back

in the third century and recorded them in the Talmud. Imagine that. Six hundred and thirteen commands of God. And you felt bad for breaking

ten commandments. How do you feel knowing there are six hundred and three more for you to follow?

Overwhelmed? Tempted to just throw your hands up in the air and scream, forget it. That's impossible. I can't do it.

Well, whisper that last part again. I can't do it.

That is exactly what God wants to hear from you. Admission from you that you can't, and only he

can. Have you ever faced an overwhelming task with impossible odds and felt like giving up?

Well, this meditation from Psalm 143 will help you surrender, but not out of weakness,

it will help you surrender in a new way.

Surrender out of strength into the hands of God, pleading for help from your God

who wants only for you to ask for help.

So to begin your meditation, find a place to be alone, still and quiet before God.

We will be together in this divine retreat for about 15 minutes.

But to begin, allow your breathing to settle and your eyes to patiently move from open

into a soft gaze to closed. You settle deeper into this place of obedience. And if possible,

take a posture of your hands resting in your lap, palms up, a posture of surrender,

a position of receiving by responding to this passage from John 16

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