FRIDAY
For our last day on the topic of surrender I thought I would take a devotional and solely talk about the application. We have seen Moses surrendered and how God fought for him and the people of Israel. We have seen Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego surrendered and God fought for them through the fire. We have seen the beautiful declaration of surrender in Psalm 46 after God’s deliverance of Jerusalem—”Be still, and know that I am God.”
So if we are to be still in the face of insurmountable obstacles and allow God to fight for us we must be surrendered. Surrender is one of those words that both our nature and our nurture tend to resist. It just doesn’t make sense how there can be any victory in surrender. In the pride of our nature we want to be a lord unto ourselves. We, in our nature, when we face insurmountable obstacles prefer the path of William Ernest Henley in his poem, Invictus, to the path of surrender.
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
Not only is surrender a word that our nature despises, but it is also formed in us by our culture to despise it. We idolize the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae who never surrendered and fought to the death against all odds to give their countrymen time to prepare for the coming invasion of the Persians. We idolize “self-made” businessmen like Elon Musk who seemingly built their wealth up from the ground against all odds. Some of us even hear the voice of Tim Allan from Galaxy Quest declaring, “Never give up! Never surrender!” Of course, these are getting at a generally good form of courage and perseverance. However, without God these messages can form us to conclude that any form of surrender is a bad thing.
Not only is our nature and our nurture bent against us, but our enemy in the spiritual world would like nothing more than for us to remain in our pride and self-sufficiency. Two quotes from C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters illustrate this well. (remember this is creatively written from the perspective a demon counseling his nephew in how to entice his human subject)
“To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense. But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing. One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself-creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His. We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons. We want to suck in, He wants to give out. We are empty and would be filled; He is full and flows over. Our war aim is a world in which Our Father Below has drawn all other beings into himself: the Enemy wants a world full of beings united to Him but still distinct.” - C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters
“Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intednding, to do our Enemys will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” p. 40
With all of this working against us, there is the glorious truth of Scripture to reassure us that surrender, quite paradoxically, is indeed the path to abundant life.
Luke 9:23–25 (NIV)
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
Romans 12:1 (NIV)
1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.
The beautiful paradox is that in losing our life for Jesus (surrendering to him), we actually save it. Those who have fully surrendered to Jesus throughout church history, despite facing persecutions and difficulties, have found joy, purpose, and hope. This doesn't come naturally - it's the result of a life saved by Jesus and fully surrendered to His will. The message of Jesus is consistent: those who surrender everything to follow Christ will find true life in Him.
Additional Content
"The strongest human will is always the one that is surrendered to God's will and acts with it." - Willard
Reflection
Are you willing to lose your life for Jesus? Are you ready to surrender all of yourself to him? Or are you listening to the influence of your sinful nature, the culture, and demons to hold fast to control of your life? Do you trust him that this is the way to saving and finding your true, eternal life? Are you still chasing the whole world at the forfeit of your very soul?