Surrender

"OK, I give up!" 

"Hand over your weapons." 

Yield (road construction).

These commands all evoke scenes from a TV western, cop show or a vacation trip. It appears that agreeing to obey these phrases mean that the battle has been lost or someone's rights have been taken away.

We in America learn very early that we should be independent. Isn’t the truism “God helps those who help themselves” in the Bible?.(Nope, I think that saying came from Ben Franklin.) Consequently, “surrender” almost seems to be un-American.

One day this week, songs from the previous Sunday’s worship service kept cycling through my mind—particularly the ones about surrender. So, I decided the word would make an interesting topic to explore.

With respect to surrendering to God, the ultimate reality means to hand over the “reins” of your life to Christ, saying, “I trust You to guide me in the best direction, to make the best decisions, and to form or nurture the right relationships."

However, our Lord is also the ultimate Gentleman. He always gives us a choice, so we are free to take back the “reins” of our life if that is what we want—or not even hand them over in the first place. Then the not-so-smart decisions are made and as a result, we can either fall into the “Slough of Despond” or learn a life-lesson from our disastrous take-charge attitude, once again surrendering the reins of our life to the One Who knows best—and will never steer us wrong.

Surrender definitely has a component of vulnerability. That lends a negative aspect to it when it comes to us on a plain other that our relationship with Christ.  Actually though, I think He wants us to be vulnerable with Him, or perhaps transparent is a better word. 

At any rate, in spite of the negative connotation to the word, surrender, I have discovered that surrendering to my Creator is the very opposite of losing the battle. This type of surrender actually grants freedom—freedom from worry and stress, freedom from yielding (surrendering) to sin, itself. Paul says this so well in Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ has made me free from the law of sin and death.”

This blog post seems unfinished but it may be because surrender in the spiritual life seems never to be a “done deal.” As someone wrote regarding believers being living sacrifices to God, “the sacrifice keeps crawling off the altar.” In that respect, surrender must be a continuing attitude/mind-set until we get it perfect. By that time, we will be in Heaven:).

As usual, I would welcome any comments pro or con from readers--so thanks for reading to the end