I Surrender

"Surrender requires us to burn like Him, not like us."

GOD IS NOT LOOKING for personal effort. He needs complete surrender. We strive to reach Him, to get His attention, to do under our own effort what He’s already provided when He just needs surrender. We want to look a certain way in His eyes, to sound competent and use all the right terms. Truth is, if we’d surrender, it doesn’t matter to Him how messy we are, how ignorant, nor how out-of-sync with religious criteria.

Surrender is painful because our emotions don’t like it. I’ve made a point to notice when my emotions flare up, and instead of following them, I tell myself the mental pain of overcoming them is worth it. They’ve stopped being a frustration, and instead, the frustration has become a point of surrender. In it, I’ve found peace. I heard peace described as strength. Minister John Jester said it’s a powerful force that separates us from all that destroys our peace. It’s not passive. It’s aggressive.

Surrender is aggressive. It’s saying, “No, I will do this. I will not do what I want but what God needs.” God has no need but our surrender. He only needs us, our will laid down, our heart open to His will. We have to move from singing about surrender to becoming surrendered. Minister Norris Johnson II spoke about how much harder he felt like he had to work to overcome his physical shortcomings and addictions than his friends. He wanted victory, but it took far too much time in his opinion.

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What is instant for one person isn’t for another. I have stood in this same place, having to keep my thoughts focused on God’s love for me, on His powerful Spirit in me, and on the Word of God which promises me freedom. I had to stay surrendered. It isn’t a single moment, a gesture, but a continual position, and there is a place of peace in it where God holds all the keys and even if your mind wants to go left or right, you simply can’t. He held Zacharias silent, and that gave him lots of time to meditate on what he’d been told and how he should behave. We’re a flash in the pan. God is a steady, burning fire. Surrender requires us to burn like Him, not like us.

Surrender brings us nearer, and being nearer, we have greater hearing. It changes how we think and how we react, and I admit that being surrendered, sometimes, I don’t know how to react. The old Suzanne would do this or that thing. The new one is still figuring this all out. But the new one can now ask and hear the answer, and that’s an amazing thing. Our emotions distract us. Peace puts God on a loudspeaker, not the football stadium kind but conversation. Suddenly, He’s right here. In one of those moment for me, He asked me to call Him Jesus. “My name is Jesus.” I’ve realized since then how much I used “Lord” instead of His name and how much the church does the same. We use His name in authority, but to talk to Him, we don’t. He is Lord, but His name is Jesus. My friends are first names, not titles. Surrender gave me that.

Surrender took my mind off of my problems, off of me, and caused me to lean back on Him. He became my support, and that’s what He still wants of us all. I say “still” because we lean on Him for our initial salvation then take up the weight of everything else upon ourselves. But we are to lay down our burdens and take up His cross, and it is His Spirit that raised Him from the dead. It’s His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, that quickens or makes us alive so that, being fully surrendered, we are no more in bondage to sin and death. No longer does deception and fear and anxiety rule in us, but in us and upon us is God to such a degree we can’t fathom His goodness.

“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Romans 8:9-11)

There is the true beauty of our surrender. Not only that we’ve laid ourselves down, dead to sin and alive to our place in God, but that He has lifted us higher to His point-of-view and poured into us such wonder and amazement that we know none of what we now have was our doing but now all of it is ours. In God.

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.” (Psalms 23:6)

“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com