What Does Surrender Look Like Anyway?

God is good. That is true. I believe that with all of my heart. I would say that as Christians, most of us would agree wholeheartedly with that statement. We quote scriptures like Psalm 37:3-4 which says, "Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart," and Matt. 6:33 which says, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." We accept wholeheartedly the concept that "God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him," (Heb. 11:6). 

We love to focus on getting the desires of our heart fulfilled and on all the things that He will add to us. We look forward to our rewards. Yet we can often neglect to do the causative side of the equation. In each of these scriptures there is a requirement of us. We must be committed to trusting in the Lord (not ourselves) and taking delight in Him (not the things we want). We must be committed to seeking His kingdom AND His righteousness.  We must live by faith and believe that He is who He says He is as we seek Him in order to activate the reward.  

We have a mindset as Christians that if we love God and serve Him that He will give us all the desires of our heart. This is true. I do not dispute any of it, I just want us to realize that we often fall short because our expectations might be slightly askew. Do we love and serve Him because He is worthy and it is right to do so, or do we love Him and serve Him because of the promises. What if there were no rewards in this life and they were all reserved for the heavenly realm. Would we serve Him with the same diligence? 

Are we really living a surrendered life?

Several years ago a talented, gifted and anointed minister was sharing their heart with me and proclaimed in frustration, "I will not die on the altar of ministry." I knew they were working hard and I also knew that they had some disagreements with their leadership but I did not know that they were struggling with some personal issues beyond just the thanklessness and busy-ness of a ministry schedule. My first instinct was empathy. I felt bad that they felt that they were giving up their lives for the ministry. However shortly thereafter I realized that we are all called to lay down our lives for ministry. Some of us do it in pulpit ministry and some of us do in the marketplace in one of the seven mountains of influence but each of us is called to bend our will to the will of the king. Each of us is called to surrender our lives in service and yeild to Him. If we aren't prepared to die on the altar of ministry, then we will inevitably die on the altar of pride, sin and selfish desires. We will either serve one master or the other. 

Jesus said in John 12:24, "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it will bear much fruit." If we want to be ministers for God, we must be willing to die for His name's sake so that we can bear fruit. Otherwise we will still die, but alone and without legacy. We're taught in John 15:13, "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." Who are our friends? If the ones Jesus loves are our friends then are we willing to lay down what we want in life in order to serve them? If not, can we really say we love them? We sing the song, "I am a friend of God." Are we?  

Abraham was called a friend of God because he believed God, and walked in humble obedience to him even at the expense of surrendering his greatest gift to the Lord's command. That is what qualified him to be called friend.

In Gen. 22:2-14 God asks Abraham to sacrifice his dearest treasure, the son of promise, Isaac. Abraham obeyed God. What are we willing to lay on the altar at God's request? Matt. 26:7 recounts a story of how, "a woman (Mary) came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table." Mary didn't just pour a simple jar of perfume on Jesus. She poured out her dowry on Him and in an unparalleled act of genuine love and surrender she gave up her entire future just to love Him. 

For those of us who are single, or maybe who are in marriage relationships we have not fully nurtured, will we sacrifice our sexual "freedoms,""rights" and/or opportunities to find “love” in order to love the author of love Himself? 

I'm not saying you will have to live without love and romantic fulfillment in order to please God. That is not everyone's call, but the question is would we be willing to lay our desires down if He asked us to?

We conveniently forget sometimes that we were called to surrender all, including our bodies and physical desires.  In 1 Cor. 6:19b-20a in a chapter all about sexual immorality Paul reminds us that we are not our own; we were bought at a price." Romans 12:1 tells us to submit our bodies as living sacrifices. That means we should lay all our physical desires on the altar as a sacrifice. God knows it will be hard, hence the word sacrifice. If it wasn't going to be a sacrifice for us to do so, he would have used another word, like "gift" perhaps. Just because something is difficult does not mean it is not required.  

I know this may be a very unpopular topic of discussion and maybe some of you have already stopped reading, but there is so much more to say.  The world will tell us that our bodies are ours to do and enjoy as we please but my Bible tells me not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of my mind, then I'll be able to know what God's will truly is. (Rom. 12:2). What does your Bible say?

Not even Jesus got everything He wanted or prayed for.  He prayed three times for the cup of crucifixion, death, humiliation, sin, hell and the absence of God to be passed from Him, but only if it was God's will. God's will was for Him to fulfill His purpose. God's will for you and I is to fulfill our purpose too. Sometimes our unsurrendered desires are nothing more than a distraction from our true call and destiny. If we are not careful, we can get swept down a winding road of oposition to God.

We don't get to say, "I want to serve God but I want to do it my way. I am right and people need to bend to my way of thinking and seeing things!" Even if we are right about our views, we can still carry the wrong heart attitude. Where is the humility? Where is the surrendering all to God for the sake of His cause? Where is the dying to self? Where is the cross we were called to carry? 

Matt 10:38 says, "he who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me." Verse 39 says, "whoever find his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." When we bear down on our rights and selfish desires and refuse to pick up our cross and allow them to be crucified with Christ, we do not have the heart of a minister of the gospel of Christ.

This is not the place to say, “I am not a minister!” Yes you are. The moment you became born again you became an ambassador of Heaven in the earth and there is an obligation with that role that you will represent Heaven well while you are here. Mic. 6:8 says, "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”  

John 5:19 reminds us that even Jesus did nothing of his own accord, why should we think we can live our life to our own accord?

Another person I love dearly recently said to me that laying down certain desires in today's society is very difficult to do. Is it? True confession, I used to believe that too, but not any more. Is it possible we wrestle with our desires because we are not yet willing to surrender? Perhaps we are  living too close in proximity to the enemy's camp. Maybe we are looking over the fence a little too long to see what we can see? 

I am not speaking as one who is holier-than-thou. I have had my fair share of fumbles of the will in my journey too. So don't hear any judgement or condemnation from me.  I hope what you hear is some sisterly tough-love, mixed in with some truth juice and love. All I can tell you is that the moment I simply chose to live separate and to lay down what I want and to go fully after my purpose, the struggle ceased for me. I separated myself from the temptation and it no longer had power over me. 

The more I draw closer to Jesus, the more He fulfills every need, with no exception. He tells us in Matt. 11:29, "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." If we take on His burden (which was death to His own will) and learn from His example, He will be a gentle and humble teacher and in Him we will find rest for our souls.  Rest from the thoughts racing in our minds, rest from the wrestling with our own will and rest for our weary emotions. That is the truth and it is a promise we have a right to stand on, if we do the first part and surrender.   

We are called to be obedience even unto death. (Phil 2:5-8)

Gal. 2:20 tells us we have been crucified in Christ, so it is no longer us who live but Christ who lives in us.  Are we yeilded to Him in how we live?

The question is, do we love ourselves more that we love God? Do we love our own lives more that we love His purpose for our lives?

If we humble ourselves before the Lord, He will exalt us, if we don't our enemy is seeking whom he may devour.  (1 Pet 5:6-10). We don’t want to find ourselves outside of God’s covering due to our own willfull disobedience.

Outside of persecution and abuse, it is not humility to proclaim from the mountain top what our rights are as human beings.  Once we are born again we are not merely human beings anymore anyway.  We are supernatural beings having a human experience.  Remember, this life is only temporal.  Our real life is happening simultaneously in the unseen supernatural realm. Let us live in such a way as to become more aware of that realm than this one.  That is a key to freedom from the bondage we wrestle with on this earth. 

We are called to be more than conquerors. (Rom 8:37) We are called to overcomers. (Rev. 12:11) 

There are promises for those who choose to lean in to God.  When we are committed to trusting in the Lord (not ourselves) and taking delight in Him (not the things we want), He will give us the things we want. We won't have to fight for them or strive to attain them, that is His promise to fulfill. (Ps. 37:3-4) When we are committed to seeking His kingdom AND His righteousness, all manner of blessing will be added unto us. (Matt. 6:33)  When we choose to trust Him and live by faith, believing that He is who He says He is, He will reward us as we diligently seek after Him. (Heb. 11:6) None of these promises don’t mean that we don’t have to work hard, we do, but we work in faith knowing that the outcome of our efforts are in His hands.

Surrender is only hard until we surrender, and then we walk in a realm of breakthrough.  It is a paradox.  What does surrender look like? It looks like death to everything we've ever wanted or dreamed of. In reality though, it is actually life and realization of every promise which has been whispered into our spirits. Just surrender ... and you'll see.