The Journey of Surrender

by Jennifer S.
from Virtuous Daughters, February 2016~Volume 15, Number 11

The secret of life
Is letting go.
The secret of love
Is letting it show
In all that I do,
In all that I say,
Right here in this moment.
 
The power of prayer
Is in a humble cry.
The power of change
Is in [yielding] my life
And laying it down,
Down at Your feet,
Right here in this moment.
 
This songwriter beautifully, truthfully captures the secret to Christian living. It applies to all of us across the spectrum of life—young and old, women and men, followers and leaders, daughters, mothers, sisters, wives. Amy Carmichael puts it this way:
 
But all through life I see a cross,
Where sons of God yield up their breath.
There is no gain except by loss;
There is no life except by death.
 
What does surrender to God ultimately mean? What concepts does it carry into our lives as we seek to walk it every day? It’s helpful to lay groundwork at the start of our discussion. Please muse with me for a moment. Read slowly and ponder.

    Surrender to God is release, relinquishment, and open, yielding hands. It is giving up, letting go, laying down. It is obedience, trust, submission—“not my will/way, but Yours.” It is bowing the knee to lordship. It is bending my will; stopping right here to build an altar; entrusting the future into wiser hands than mine; consenting to see the beauty here and now. Surrender to God is stepping back, sitting down; ceasing to struggle or strive, to expect or demand; ceasing insistence or resistance. It is fighting or defending no longer; agreeing to follow; accepting what is; receiving the gift of now; affirming God’s wisdom, God’s choice, God’s portion or allowance, God’s provision and sufficiency, God’s sovereignty, kindness, love, and perfect timing. It is proclaiming God’s plan as God’s best for God’s glory through God’s grace. It’s letting Him define what is good, with my ideas laid aside.
   
Surrender to God is making Him head, lifting Him up, seeking His face. It is refusing to clamor or whine, to kick and scream, to thrash against the goads. It is ceding control, stepping down, turning over. It’s abdication in view of HIS kingdom. It’s desiring HIS glory. It’s trusting His Word. It’s being okay with lack, with loss, with disappointment in the short term. It’s acceptance of waiting, of delay, of uncertainty because HE is enough. It’s trusting His heart. It’s waiting for His working.  It’s anticipating good things and not losing heart or hope. It’s bearing fruit but not demanding it in my way or my time. It’s wanting His best. It’s embracing life on His terms.
    
Surrender to God isn’t easy. It may be the hardest thing you ever do. But the Bible truly states that there is no life without it. “... unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).
   
In my life, surrender to God has been a process, unfolding gradually over many years and following a general series of steps or stages. You may recognize some of them from your own life story; or perhaps God wants to speak them to your heart for the first time.
   
1. The first step on my journey of surrender was understanding that God’s ways/thoughts are not my ways/thoughts. His plan will not look like I expect it to look. This may sound basic, but I wish someone had explained it to me when I was younger. Scripture tells us very plainly, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8). “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for those who love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Yet somehow I never applied these verses to my thoughts or my plans. I thought I knew exactly how God wanted me to serve Him, and I had principles from Scripture to back it up. But when things didn’t work out that way, I experienced a rude (and painful!) awakening. Instead of setting my heart on my own expectations or my plans for serving God, I had to learn that I shouldn’t be surprised when His plans look very different. My advice to you: Heed the notice Scripture gives you; set your own mental pictures aside; and expect God to do something “outside the box”—something your mind has not even conceived. That’s the way He works.
   
2. After realizing that God’s plans would not look like I expected, I had to come to a point of acknowledging that His way is still the best way. This required me to humble myself. It wasn’t quick or easy. The disappointment of watching my expectations fail was painful, and I clung to the hope of my lost dreams for a long time. (The hurt was self-inflicted, but real nonetheless.) I eventually learned to stand on Scripture, though, and declare by faith that God’s plans were and would be better than mine, even if I couldn’t see how or why until later.
   
3. Working hand in hand with the previous step was a similar but slightly deeper one—letting go of what I would choose and agreeing to serve God as He directed. It’s one thing to have head knowledge that God’s ways are better, but acting on that knowledge is something else again. He required me not only to agree with His plan but to relinquish mine—to give up my so-called rights and desires and move forward with His agenda. I had to put aside what I thought was best and choose to function in His placement and time table instead. That wasn’t easy, but this was a time to do what was right regardless of what I felt like doing.
   
4. Part of releasing our desires and accepting God’s instead is learning to live joyfully in the present, not dwelling on the future or the past. This is a challenge for all of us when our minds naturally hope for tomorrow or pine for yesterday. The Lord emphasized to me that today was His gift and the place I was called to serve Him. He wanted me to embrace today, to experience Him today, to accept His grace today, to delight in His goodness and proclaim His love today in spite of its difficulties. I began to keep a notebook with a list of all His mercies, and this helped me to start rejoicing in His good gifts right now. I still needed to grow in surrender, however—renewal of our minds takes time.
     
5. It’s (unfortunately) possible to do the right things outwardly while struggles continue to rage inwardly. Unbeknownst to me, I had not “arrived” yet. I needed to reach the next step of allowing God to change my heart and finally put my selfish dreams to death. I thought I had let them go, but they still had a chokehold on my heart. I believed they were my only hope of happiness and put a martyr’s face on my obedience—“O God, I’m really suffering for You... See what pain and misery my obedience has brought me! But I’m still obeying. How sacrificial I am!” I didn’t realize that compliance with God’s plans should bring joy and life and fulfillment. It was only when He used His Word (a sharp, two-edged sword that wounds and makes us whole – Hebrews 4:12, Hosea 6:1) to pierce my dreams and divide soul from spirit that the self-pitiful thinking fell away and I was freed to embrace His dreams instead. I never could have freed myself, but what a glorious liberty He worked in my behalf!
   
6. This leads directly into the sixth step—remembering that dreams, like grains of wheat, don’t die just for the sake of dying. The Lord taught me through this experience that He is not a cosmic killjoy who delights to strip away everything that’s dear to us. He isn’t obsessed with death and pain, demanding that we crucify ourselves because dying is somehow good for us. He calls us to die, to relinquish, to surrender our desires because death is the pathway to life. It’s not the end—it’s the beginning! Every plan of mine that God allows to die becomes a seed for a beautiful, fruitful tree that springs up in its place. When I agree with God, accept His plans, and allow Him to change my heart, I must then wait expectantly for new life to follow. As Elisabeth Elliot used to say, these steps of surrender are the “gateway to joy.” That has certainly been true in my life. It doesn’t happen right away, necessarily (new life takes time to germinate, remember); but as surely as spring follows winter, fruitfulness and abundant life will follow surrender when self is put to death.
   
7. The final step in the cycle of surrender was the attitude God wanted to inculcate in me through the time of winter waiting—an attitude of trusting His heart during the interval of dormancy between death and new life. It’s difficult to walk by faith when all we can see is the loss, the burial of our hopes in the ground, with no sign of spring sprouts anywhere. Our hearts long tomake sense of the hurt we feel and may seek to numb themselves against it when we cannot immediately explain why it happened. My tendency was an undercurrent of distrust—a slip toward bitterness or cynicism. The best thing we can do at such times is to approach our heavenly Father with honesty, admitting our struggles and asking His help to wait upon Him with a loving, confiding heart. He gently helped my disappointment to heal and strengthened me to trust His love and wisdom once again.
 
    
The blessings of surrendering to God are many more than we can number. Once we release the things we want in our limited human perspective, we discover the greatness of what God wants for us. Not only are His ways and thoughts different from ours, but they are higher, broader, and better. Isaiah 55, which we quoted earlier, goes on to say, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). There are so many “good and perfect gifts” (James 1:17) in my life today that I never would have received or experienced if life had worked out according to my plans. Rich relationships, ministries, explorations, opportunities, and experiences have been added unto me through God’s goodness, because He enabled me to surrender my expectations and seek first His kingdom (Matthew 6:33). Many dreams and desires have come to pass because other dreams and desires were pulled away or put on hold. I can speak confidently from my experience (as could many heroes in Scripture—Joseph, Moses, Ruth, David, Esther, Daniel, Mary...) that surrender to God’s plans is the key to fulfillment and fruitfulness. God is willing and “able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). His kingdom works very much like this poem by Martha Snell Nicholson. Is its victorious story the story of your life?
 
 
One by one He took them from me,
All the things I valued most,
Until I was empty-handed;
Every glittering toy was lost.
 
And I walked earth’s highways, grieving
In my rags and poverty
Till I heard His voice inviting,
“Lift your empty hands to Me!”
 
So I held my hands toward heaven,
And He filled them with a store
Of His own transcendent riches,
Till they could contain no more.
 
And at last I comprehended
With my stupid mind and dull,
That God COULD not pour His riches
Into hands already full!
 
 
 
Betty Stam, John Wesley, and other Christian heroes have written covenants of surrender to document their commitments to God. Perhaps this adaptation of their words (which hangs on my wall) will encourage you to write a covenant of your own.
 
Lord, I turn over to You all my own plans and purposes, all my ambitions, every one of my hopes and desires.  I renounce my claim upon them—my right ever to receive them back—and I accept Your will for my life.  You own it.  Replace the former things with Your sovereign plans and purposes, with humble, holy aspirations, with whatever hopes and desires Your loving wisdom shall choose.  I rest in the certainty that You give good gifts to your children.*  I affirm that Your ways and thoughts are higher and more wonderful than mine.*  I believe that Your plans for me are good—plans for wholeness and not for evil,* to give me a future on earth and a hope  for all eternity.  Those who wait for You shall not be disappointed.*  Your Word is wholly true.  You cannot deny Yourself.*
 
And, further, I lay at Your feet my daily life.  Its ownership and direction are not rightfully my own, but Yours.  To You belong my time, my possessions, my pursuits and activities, my thinking, my will and my emotions, my companions and friends, my living situation, my work and my health, my very self.  All rights are Yours. Most poignantly, I relinquish the right to choose whom I will love and serve, or how, or when.  Preside over my living and direct it so that You can most clearly reveal Yourself through me.  You have not given me a spirit of fear*, but of love* and hope*, of trust and adoption.*  Make me worthy of Your calling, and fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by Your power, so that the name of my Lord Jesus may be glorified in me, and I in Him, according to the grace of God and the Lord Jesus Christ.*
                       
“I am no longer my own, but Thine.
Put me to what Thou wilt, rank me with whom Thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed by Thee or laid aside for Thee,
Exalted for Thee or brought low by Thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to Thy pleasure and disposal. 
 
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Thou art mine, and I am Thine.  So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
Let it be ratified in heaven.  Amen.”
                     -John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer
 
 
 
* Matthew 7:11, James 1:17; 2 Timothy 1:7; Isaiah 55:8-9, 1 Corinthians 2:9; Romans 5:5, 1 John 4:18;  Jeremiah 29:11 (ESV), Psalm 27:13, 2 Corinthians 4:7-8; Romans 15:13, Hosea 2:15; Isaiah 49:23; Isaiah 30:15, Romans 8:15; 2 Timothy 2:13; 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12
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