REMEMBER TO SURRENDER

It does not need to be debated:  the non-Christian world hates words like submission and surrender.  Look at our attitudes in the world, we have promotions and publicity, we have politics and popularity, we have petty pomp and prosperity—all this we have in super-abundance.  But what we do not have in any age is submissive men and women with such a deep devotion for the Lord Jesus as to offer Him their unconditional surrender, saying be my “all in all.” (Colossians 3:11)

Furthermore, then to make such a profound commitment with a complete indifference to their own name and fame, that is always rare in any generation.  But when you think about Christ’s willingness, at such an awesome price of suffering and the giving of His very life—that alone should be more than enough of a motivation for all who claim to know Him to emphatically and eagerly yield all we are to Him.  Cannot we gladly yield back what He bought for us with His lifeblood?

Major Ian Thomas had a massive impact on my life.  He had an ability to say things in a way that not only caused you to think about them endlessly, but then, you said, “I want that for my life.”  It relates to full surrender.  He said, “When all that you are is available to all that God is, then all that God is, is available to all that you are!”  These words, fully understood, should make all of us say, “Please, Lord, let it be true in me.”  Submission becomes the means of His abundance to be fully experienced in us.  We must long for it with a heart of humility.

So, when we say sincerely, “I refuse nothing to God,” get ready for His supernatural presence in your life, maybe as never before.  The submission which is so resented by men full of their own self-sufficiency is the very door that opens to all God can and will do for us.

That is God’s way, but when anyone attempts to replace God’s revelation for man’s reason, it is wrongheaded from the very start and most often the very reverse of the ways of God.  Reason can never be skillfully substituted for what God has clearly said to us.  That is not to say reason has no place in Christian understanding, but it is to say human reason without divine revelation leads to sure failing and certain floundering.  We quote Paul saying, “If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.” (I Corinthians 3:18)  To believe and apply that verse for those with vaulted minds and proud hearts is almost impossible.  It is, in fact, irreconcilable!  Those who have unbounded confidence in personal assertiveness and who prioritize elevated reason find those words are some of the most distasteful words of Scripture!

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote, “Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work. I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it … I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’”

God always resists human pride that has swelled itself against heaven.  A strong word of explanation is necessary.  The same God that gave us a mind with which to think and reason is also the same God that gives us a will to surrender.  Our God-touched minds become the means to humble ourselves before the mighty and everlasting God—we are to bow before Him.  When Paul spoke of fools in the verse just quoted, he was referring to a mind reverently humble before God—that is submissive, which is, by this world’s standard, the mind of a “fool.”  Surrender is that word that angers prideful unbelief and stirs it to open expressions of hostility in people with inflated views of human reason, and so it detests being told to kneel submissively before Him.

John Stott captures it in one sentence, “Probably at no point does the Christian mind clash more violently with the secular mind than in its insistence on humility and its implacable hostility to pride.”  Very deeply ingrained into our very nature is the desire to be god in substitute of God.  We have no greater sign of pride confirmed than when we think we know better than God.  And we desperately need to be saved from it.  Andrew Murray said, “a man needs above all to be saved from what is the root of all sin—his self-will and his pride.”

It is universally true, “Everyone [outside of surrender to Christ] flatters himself and carries a kingdom in his breast,” said John Calvin.  A self-made king in his own small kingdom!  So, let us remember to surrender, for without it what we give birth to is our own self-confidence which will end up in our own self-condemnation and coming humiliation. 

Can you see angels by the millions in heaven gathered to be astonished at human beings saying to Almighty God that they will never submit?  All other expressions of sinful humanity are against the laws of God, but the muttering before God, ‘I will not!’ is a sin against God himself, and that is to be halfway down the slope of hell.

The Puritan preacher John Flavel had good news for us when he said, “When God intends to exalt a soul [through forgiveness, into the kingdom of God], He first makes it sensible to its own miseries, wants, and nothingness.”  In contrast, none are, in fact, so completely empty as those who are totally full of themselves.  It has been said well, “The last thing a person will surrender to God is their inflated intellectual pride; that’s the last sin to go.”

So, if you have read these words and inwardly blushed in shame, it’s the first step to God’s embrace.  Over a half-century ago I first encountered the words of William Bridges and then memorized them to be able to say them before people, “If you lay yourself at Christ’s feet, He will take you into His arms!”

May God help us all to remember to surrender and find ourselves nestled in the arms of Christ after laying our life at His feet.