The First Step Of Surrender

Surrender.  

It sounds like something you do when someone is attacking you.  It sounds like giving up.  Frankly, it sounds like weakness.  And in a way it totally is. And the HUMILITY that can admit that weakness turns out to be the first and most important step of surrender to God,

The humble heart not only acknowledges God’s greatness, and his Lordship of our lives, but also the extent to which we need His help.   And without such humility it is impossible to embark on and maintain a life of surrender.

Surrender is a decision to lay down the leadership of your life and give it completely to the Lord Jesus Christ.    In reality it is a fulfillment of a great exchange.  He gave His life to me.  Out of love.  And now I give my life to him out of gratitude for that love.

Jesus wants us to know that when we make this exchange and truly make him Lord, He becomes our MASTER and we become his SERVANTS.  And as the captain of our salvation He showed us by his example how to humble ourselves, surrender our lives and our will and serve a new master.
‍ ‍He existed in the form of God, yet he gave no thought to seizing supreme equality with God as his supreme prize. Instead he EMPTIED himself of his outward glory by reducing himself to the form of a lowly servant. He became human.  He humbled himself and became vulnerable, choosing to be revealed as a man and was obedient - even in his death, a criminal's death of crucifixion.  Philippians 2:5

But how does one come by this kind of humility that recognizes our own weaknesses and surrenders the controls to God?  I would like to think that we could look at Creation and the amazing works of God, recognize His greatness and make an honest assessment of our own weakness compared to His greatness. But alas, human pride can be blinding.

God in His mercy has decreed that He will resist pride and give grace to the humble.  And we should be very glad for this merciful resistance.  If God did not resist our pride, and everything we do is widely successful, we could stay happily deceived in pride forever.

For me, that resistance came roaring at me in many forms after 30 years as a Christian.  I had taught my children and many more about the God I had come to know and love.  But I was faced with the hard reality that there are no grandchildren in the kingdom of God.  Each person, no matter how sincerely I worked and worked to introduce them to God’s ways, must come to their own decision about believing in God.  And as many of my students chose differently than I hoped, I became saddened and frustrated.

On top of that, I faced trials and pressures in my family and personal life that just wouldn’t seem to budge no matter how much Bible Study, faith and prayer I threw at them.  I was disappointed. But as a long-term Christian, I felt it was wrong to blame God.  So I pressed on and I tried to stay faithful as many good sermons taught me to do. But there was a nagging ache I didn’t want to address. As time went on, I turned to various distractions instead of to God to numb the pain of that disappointment and the “sickness” of hopes deferred. (Proverbs 13:12)

But I would soon discover that there is essentially only one knob for sensitivity.  The more I turned down the sensitivity to my disappointment and pain, the more my sensitivity to the voice of the Lord also numbed.  Soon I found myself struggling to sense and discern.  “God, where are you?”  “Why are you not speaking to me the way you used to?”  I had heard countless sermons that God doesn’t ‘move’, we do; but with decreased sensitivity I spent more time than I would like to admit in that numb place.  Finally, a good friend full of discernment called me out!  His life was vibrant with God’s direction and he shared an intimacy with God that I recognized but had not enjoyed for some time.  He brought a word of knowledge that flooded the condition of my heart with merciful revelation.

At that point, I knew I had a choice.  I wanted that intimacy and discernment back even if I had to lose the false comfort I had relied on. I missed God more than I wanted success.  I cried out to God, “Lord, I don’t care if I am a complete failure as a minister.  I don’t care if my efforts ever bear fruit or if you take my calling away completely.  I just want YOU!”

There it was.  Honesty before God. A willingness to be a failure in my own eyes, but WITH God than to hold onto the numbness of false comfort, but alone. I humbled myself before the Lord and made a fresh surrender.  He could have my life.  All of it, however it turned out and no matter what I thought of it.   And with that humility and surrender, came a fresh flood of God’s grace.

The surrender I made was total: my life, my reputation, my time and efforts.  All of it was on the altar.  And the freedom was just as total.  I now had only one thing that I had to do.  Follow Him. I only have to do what He tells me to do – without regard as to what it would look like to me or others, whether it looked like I could or could not handle his direction, and fully at His expense for both the initiation of His will and the consequences.  Oh what I joy to have Him and relinquish control! 

It turned out that the first step to surrender was humility.  And in his mercy he resisted my pride so that I could have what I wanted most of all:  Him.