A Full Surrender

02/24/2007

In war, surrender is not what we’re hoping for unless it comes from the other side. In every battle, unless it ends up a tie, there is one side that claims victory, and one side that raises the white flag of surrender. Most of our lives, we don’t want to be the white-flag raiser. We are trained that way…look at the game of “Uncle.” The pain in that game is usually inflicted by an older sibling, and as the torture begins, we don’t want to call out uncle…but as the arm is bent further and further up the back and the pain increases, there comes a time when we will cry out “Uncle!” It’s pretty much a given that the little guy is going to surrender in the battle of “Uncle.”

But, let’s take a look at God’s “world,” where crying out “Jesus!” in our act of surrender takes on a whole new meaning. Surrender is what God asks of us to fully know Him, or to even get to know Him in the first place. It’s a time in our lives when we make a decision to step out from behind the barricades that have held us captive and raise our bloodied white flag and say, “Yes!” It’s a time when we have had quite enough of this world as it is, and we want something more, and at the same time we’re needing a rest. It is a time when we want to believe what we cannot see—to fully embrace the promises of God.

In talking with a friend the other day and discussing how unbelievers have a veil that keeps them from believing, until they say yes to Christ, (2 Cor. 3:14) we were talking about what brings us to the point of saying, “Yes.” We talked of how sometimes it’s a hardship, or as in her case, simply growing up with it as a child, or in my case, just getting to a point in life where being alive didn’t make sense without God. She said even with that veil removed though, “It can sometimes still be hard to grasp the concept that we die, are buried in a grave, but continue to live. That seems crazy. It seems easier to believe when we die, we die, and that’s the end—even though that’s not what we really want.”

We don’t want to die, we want to live, forever! So why is it so difficult to embrace what we have been given? Because, we have to give up any right to ourselves, submit ourselves to a God we cannot see, and say yes to the gift of His Son who walked this earth over 2,000 years ago. We have to take a step of faith, to cry out “Uncle,” before we really even know Who or What we are surrendering to. It can seem absurd! What are we thinking?

If we will open up our Bibles, probably more on the New Testament side than the Old, with a quick glance at the words we’ll see…I saw these words—believe, great kindness, patiently endure troubles, power, love, reconciled to God, fully confident, and a new life, just to name a few. Now compare these words to the words you will hear on the nightly news, or in your local newspaper, or out on the street. What do we hear there—death, destruction, fires, shootings, kidnaps, scandal, war, just to name a few. Now, given a choice, which “world” would we choose to live in? The world where we see and hear and feel and taste all the ugliness that is there, or the world where we are promised a new life, love, being reconciled to God, fully confident and experiencing great kindness? I choose the Bible!! This is not to say there are not wars and destruction and plenty of other catastrophes found in God’s Word, but through it all there is Hope and Love and a New Life to be had by all who will surrender their lives in the midst of it all to Jesus.

There are times in our lives when the word surrender takes on new meanings. It depends greatly on the circumstances we find ourselves in at the time. When we first give our lives to Jesus, we call out surrender. We admit to the fact that we are a sinner, and we need a Savior. We ask for forgiveness and enter into a new way of being in this world, a way of being that cannot be explained to someone whose mind is still covered with a veil. Upon this surrender, we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit, who comes to live inside of us. This surrender opens the gates of Heaven to us for all of eternity! This is a very good thing indeed!

He has commissioned us, and he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment of everything he will give us.
2 Corinthians 1:21-22 (NLT)

Through this surrender, we begin our new walk on the free side of life--the side that allows God’s promises to start to work in our lives in new ways. If we are smart, we will begin to read about those promises in God’s Word, and get to know them well because there will come many times in our lives when we will need to cling to everything God has to offer! Life does not become an easy street when we enter into our walk with God, as some are led to believe.

In my own walk, and in thinking about the word surrender, it brings to mind the night I was baptized. As I stepped into the baptismal tank, with our son Phil watching from the audience, the worship band began to play, “I Surrender All.” Unlike most who would step in, give a short testimony, go for the dunk and then exit the tank, I was called to stand and wait until this song was finished. Phil had been battling Leukemia for quite a few years at that point, and so forefront on my mind was the surrendering of our child into the hands of God should He so desire to take him Home. It was a powerful moment, as you can well imagine. It was no “coincidence,” of that I’m sure. God knew, God planned, God had my attention, and God had my surrender on that night, and many nights since then.

Most surrenders come in small increments in our daily walk with God. As in any war, there are many battles to be fought, and in each battle, a winner will be had. Our battles can be as small as not having that extra piece of cake (although that can be a tough one), or as large as living without someone we dearly love on this earth, and everything in between. Most battles are not a World War, but merely scuffles along the way that we can either find victory in or defeat in, and go on to fight another day. But I believe there comes a time in the life of every believer when we face a “World War.” This involves everything we know, everything we love, everything we believe, and every bit of strength we have. We come to this war ready to fight, and fight we do, and do, and do, and do…until we run out of resources, we run out of ideas, we run out of strength, we run out of words and dreams and wishes and even prayers to pray, and we call, “Uncle.”

That day came for me in the Oncology Clinic one day with Phil. He had relapsed after just three months off of chemotherapy, and we were back, starting all over again--only this time the treatment would be even tougher. This battle had already been long and hard and grueling, and Phil had been a great soldier, rarely complaining, always enduring, always willing to fight again another day. As his mother, I was struggling…

On this day at the clinic, I wandered out into the hallway while Phil was receiving treatment and probably watching a movie. I started to glance at the brochures on the wall, and I picked up one that talked about what happens when your child relapses with Leukemia. My world changed on that day, and my act of surrender took on a whole new depth, because I realized that even if we crossed every “t” and dotted every “i,” our child could still die. I guess I had been fooling myself up to that point. I guess I thought if we worked hard enough, helped him do all the things that needed doing, gave all the medications perfectly, did everything the doctor said, we were guaranteed a victory in this battle. On that day, I faced the cold hard facts…I realized that our son’s life was in God’s hands, not ours. His life was God’s plan, not ours. His days were numbered by God, not by us.

I walked slowly back into the treatment room and found a chair and sat down. I know I was stunned and silent as this information crept into every ounce of my being--and there and then my heart slowly but willingly raised the white flag of surrender--not only for my own life but also for the life of my son. I was done trying to be the one in control; I relinquished that control to the only One who ever had it in the first place, the Lord Almighty. To say it was a good day would probably not be accurate, but to say it was a transforming day surely would be. I have not been the same since, and I have no desire to go back to the life that I lived in Christ before that day of surrender, because what God shows a believer on that day and in the days thereafter is His supernatural power on this earth through the Holy Spirit--Who is now allowed to enter into any room in the “House.”

John Fischer writes:

That’s the one thing about resurrection power we often forget: Something has to die for it to be experienced. Resurrection power is not handed out to healthy, well-adjusted successful people. Resurrection power is not a way to add on to your faith. It’s not like going down to the spiritual gym and working out until you build up a good amount of resurrection power. It’s not like adding some power drink or multi-spiritual vitamins to your spiritual regimen. You don’t add devotional time with God in order to burst your spiritual buttons with newly formed resurrection power. No. There’s only one way to get resurrection power. You suffer and die for it. You get cut down, humiliated, slammed in the face, and knocked flat on your back. You don’t get pumped up. Quite the opposite, you get everything pumped out of you, and that’s when you rise again – when there is absolutely no way anything could possibly come from you.

When the Holy Spirit first enters into the heart of a believer, we barely know He has arrived. We know about the Father, and we know about Jesus, and we know that we have received eternal life, but most times we don’t yet know about the power of God that lives inside of us. That power, or relationship with the Holy Spirit, can get overlooked for a long time--sometimes our entire walk through life--unless we’ve been “introduced.” I was introduced to the Holy Spirit on that day in the clinic, in a new way—a way that would take time to even fully understand--but now, many years later, if someone should ask me if I have embraced the Holy Spirit in my life, my answer would be a resounding, “Yes!”

In Acts 19, there is the story of Paul as he traveled to Ephesus. It says that he found several believers on his journey. In some translations, it says they were disciples. These were faithful men, but Paul did something interesting. He asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” It seems a strange question to ask a believer, doesn’t it? But look at their answer. They said, “No. We don’t know what you mean. We haven’t even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

They didn’t have the Word, like we do today. They had John the Baptist who told people to turn from sin and turn to God. John said to believe in Jesus, the One who would come later. This is all they knew, and they went with it! When Paul met them, he updated them in their belief, if you want to look at it that way, and they were then baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and then when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them. (Acts 19) We don’t want to miss this today! This is for all of us who believe! We are to repent, we are to believe, and we are to receive! We don’t want to get stuck in the repenting and the believing parts without realizing the receiving part! That’s what keeps us going on this earth--the Holy Spirit that lives in the heart of every believer--we have to make sure we have welcomed Him in, embraced Who He is, and are allowing Him to work in our lives the way He is meant to!

Jesus said, “…when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere—“ Acts 1:8 (NLT)

Sometimes, we will come to a point in our lives where we will make a conscious decision to embrace the Holy Spirit because we realize that we no longer want to live our lives in our own strength and without knowing Him as we should. We might do this in a church meeting, it might be during a time of prayer with some other faithful believers, it might be during a private time of prayer alone with God. God's ways are different for all of us. And then sometimes, we embrace the Holy Spirit without even realizing what we are doing, like I did that day in the clinic. I had no clear explanation for what had happened. I didn’t announce it to the world, or even to any of my friends or family, I simply had that moment of surrender with God, and walked out of the clinic a different person than when I went in. It wasn’t in my plan for the day, but I know that God knew what was going to happen. That’s one of the things I love about God, He’s way ahead of us in this game called life, and He is so prepared to meet our every need.

It wasn’t too long after this experience that I started reading a book by Charles Stanley called, “The Wonderful Spirit-filled Life.” As I read Charles’ words about surrendering and abandoning ourselves to God, I began to understand the new step I had taken in my walk with the Lord of the Universe and the Holy Spirit Who was living inside of me. It’s fun to watch God work through these moments in our lives, and it’s fun to share in it with one another when God gives us the privilege to do just that.

Just the other day, I spent some time praying with a friend. We have prayed together in the past, and seen amazing results--not so much for specific prayers answered about the things going on in our lives, but more just about God meeting us where we’re at and getting to enjoy the part of Scripture that talks about where two or more are gathered, He is there. God is always with us, He never leaves us, but when we spend time acknowledging His presence together in prayer, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us in that time, wondrous things happen.

I arrived at my friend’s house, and after a short time of conversation, we entered into a time of prayer. I sat by the fireplace, which I love to do, and she sat nearby on the couch. As we began to talk with God, the dog started barking, the constructions workers out back were sawing, and other “distractions” seemed to want to keep us from this time, but we kept bringing our focus back to praying, addressing certain issues along the way, but mostly just enjoying this closeness with our Lord. It seemed I was to turn to Acts, but I didn’t know where, so I waited, and then I was drawn to turn to the Psalms, and started to read Psalm 103, bit by bit, as we prayed our way through the words written there. They seemed very appropriate to where our prayers were leading us on this day, and so we continued on. We had prayed for quite some time, and it seemed to be coming to an end when I was again drawn back to Acts…but where Lord? Having spoken on the power of the Holy Spirit in the past, I had a card in my Bible with part of Acts 19 written on it, so I went there, thinking it was only because of that card. But as I arrived there, I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to ask my friend if she had received the Holy Spirit when she believed…oh, I didn’t want to do that! I began to “debate” it with God. “Lord, it seems disrespectful. She is a wise woman. She knows Your Word. She’s a prayerful woman. Who am I to ask her such a question?” I could feel my heart start to beat harder, as it will do when God is prompting us to take an action that we really aren’t comfortable with. I knew I had to talk with my friend about this, even if she thought I was out of place in asking, because if I were to leave her house on this day without being obedient to the Holy Spirit's prompting, I knew it would not be pleasant — the aftermath of disobedience never is.

I turned to Acts 19, and began to talk with my friend about what is written there, and after some hem-hawing around, I finally got to the point…and I asked her if she had received what some call “The Second Blessing,” and if not, would she like to? After her answering that she did not know for sure, there was no hesitation on her part that we should do what Paul had done…and so I knelt beside her, placed my hand on her and read Paul’s words out loud in Acts 19 as a prayer for my friend.

In her life, this was a new beginning, but not one that she had brought about, or that I had brought about, but one that God had brought about even before I arrived there on that day. What we realized as the events of this day started to unfold in our conversation, was that before I got there, she had already made that full surrender. I was simply there to confirm with the words of Paul what had already transpired. Before I arrived, she had sat by the fire, and had come to the place that John Fischer talked about earlier, where you get everything pumped out of you, and that’s when you rise again – when there is absolutely no way anything could possibly come from you. By the time I sat with her and asked her the question--after hem-hawing around and trying to stall in my obedience to that--she later told me that when I began to speak about it, she already knew what I was going to ask her, and she was excited, and she just wanted me to get on with asking her and praying with her about it!

That’s a difficult place for us to come to as human beings. We are so self-sufficient, so prideful, so independent, that we have an extremely difficult time handing our entire lives over to God. We’ll hand little bits at a time, sometimes we’ll even hand large chunks at a time, but to hand it all over, to raise the white flag of surrender and come to a realization that without the indwelling power of God within us, nothing could possibly come from us, is a transforming moment in the life of any believer. We can admit we’re sinners, we can admit that Jesus died for our sins and that He has made the way to Heaven for us, but we have a very hard time giving up the lives we live here on this earth fully—we’ll save that for Heaven--for now, we’d still like a bit of control in what happens here…

So many of us long for Heaven, the place where God’s perfect Will will reign in our lives. We know there will be peace in Heaven, and joy, and perfect love--but we can have so much more of that here if we will make the choice to give up all that we cling to, and cling to our Lord instead. Why wish for Heaven, hope for Heaven, and all that it contains, and not be willing to embrace what God has already made available to us here on this earth while we still live in these earthly bodies? Why will we not embrace here on earth what we so long for in Heaven--to have God in complete control, and to allow His power to work in and through our lives.

Many Christians live their whole lives being tired, and frustrated, and confused, and wondering where God is, and why He’s not helping more, and why we can’t seem to hear Him, and not understanding what we’re even supposed to be doing here? The answer to all these questions is clearly seen in the life of Paul. He had a powerful, all-encompassing devotion to Christ. As Oswald Chambers puts it, “Our Lord said, in effect, to Paul—Your whole life is to be overmastered by Me; you are to have no end, no aim, and no purpose but Mine.” If we’re looking for a call on our lives, that’s the perfect example! Oswald goes on to say, “Paul was devoted to a Person, not a cause. He was absolutely Jesus Christ’s, he saw nothing else, he lived for nothing else.”

We may say, “That’s too much for me. I just can’t go that far, I just can’t devote that much of myself right now, there are some things I just need to do first…” And the days will pass, and the weeks will pass, and the months and the years and the decades, and we’ll arrive Home having missed out on the most exciting life possible…the life that Paul lived. Not an easy life, for sure, Paul endured great hardships along the way, and so will we, but his was a life filled with great purpose because he was absolutely Jesus Christ’s. He had come to his day of surrender on the road to Damascus, which we can read about in Acts 9. And after his conversion, a man named Ananias went and found Saul. “He laid his hands on him and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road, has sent me so that you may get your sight back and be filled with the Holy Spirit.’” (Acts 9:17 NLT) Saul, renamed Paul, was never the same again!

I believe my friend will never be the same again, and as I left her house after our time of prayer, a song came on the radio that just made me smile at God’s goodness and the fun we can have with Him in this life. The words to the song rang out, “…some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this…some people search forever…could this be the greatest love of all…” What a perfect song to hear after spending time enjoying the greatest love of all with my friend, and experiencing a moment with her that some will wait a lifetime for…how can we not see God in all of it? In talking with my friend a few weeks later, she said she has a new confidence in God, and a new peace in her life. I have to tell you, it is visible to me when I am with her!

I am no expert on all of this, my only desire is to have an obedient heart and be devoted absolutely to Jesus Christ in this life. There are times when God calls all of us to do things that make us uncomfortable--as in asking my friend about her personal relationship with God on this day--but God was bringing her into a closer relationship with Him, and as her friend He brought me to her house to help encourage her in this deeper life of devotion and surrender. The battles are not over, and we can’t fool ourselves into even thinking so, but they are fought on a new playing field--one where things are seen more clearly, and where there can be peace in the midst of any storm because our focus is on Jesus Christ. Picture Jesus asleep in the boat, in total control, and not worrying--and then know that we can continually go to where He is and rest with Him.

Little did I know, but this amazing day was not yet finished as I received a phone call later that evening from another friend, struggling with other things--and in talking through those things, she told me earlier that day she had uttered the words that God so longs to hear, something to the effect of, “I give up”…and she and I began to talk about that surrender, and to pray through Paul’s words in Acts 19 together…

If you’re “done,” if you’re needing a boost of power from our Lord to continue on, if you are longing to have the devoted life of Paul that we read about in God’s Word…whatever your case may be…ask yourself a very personal question, “Did I receive the Holy Spirit when I believed?” If your honest answer is, “I don’t know what you mean,” like the disciples responded in Acts 19, then there’s more to be had in your walk with God and you don’t want to miss it! Keep searching, keep asking, and keep knocking until you discover the Holy Spirit that lives within you…then embrace Him fully. He’s been waiting for you to welcome Him into your entire life!

“For the Kingdom of God is not just fancy talk; it is living by God’s power.”
1 Corinthians 4:20 (NLT)

God bless you on your quest,
Diane