What is a surrendered life? For the purposes of this article, a surrendered life is a life that consciously becomes a tool and channel of the will of God.
Now being able to make a conscious choice implies possessing a free will. Your free will is the exact point where you begin to exist as a human identity. You can surrender this will voluntarily and continue to be yourself, but if God violates it forcefully, you cannot. In this sense, then, when God creates a separate will he limits his own will for as long as that separate will exists. God’s purpose is to persuade you to surrender your will to him.
But let us be sure we understand the nature and limitation of
our freedom of will. Jeremiah
Man’s Predicament
Man is fallen. In
God wants to save man from this slavery, but in order to do so God must draw him from his own self-centeredness. The self-centered man must die and be born again. When man surrenders to God he accepts a relationship between himself and God in which he lives no longer in a misguided attempt to please himself but rather in a guided attempt to please God.
The only perfectly surrendered life was that of the man Christ Jesus. The Father’s name was perfectly hallowed in him. In him God’s will was done on earth as it was in heaven.
We see this pattern and admire it but cannot seem to live by it. We dislike admitting our helplessness and our sin. We suppose that we need saving from the world God created and the unpleasant circumstances that surround us. We talk freely of neurosis and maladjustment, but we dislike the uncompromising bluntness of the word “sin.” We seek ways to improve our lives short of surrender, and we fail. Christ can save, but only on his terms, and his terms demand surrender.
But we shrink from surrender to the will of God because we fear that surrendering our lives will cause them to go contrary to our own wills. We attempt by our own efforts to clean up our lives and tear out old habits, but the cold winds of fear and the wet rains of doubt hinder us. If we lose our acquisitiveness, we may be in want. If we lose the sources of our pride, we may be humiliated. If we lose our critical suspicions, someone may take advantage of us. We fail to grasp the fact that God is changeless and that his changelessness is our peace.
The Surrendered Man
The surrendered man believes in the trustworthiness of God. The unsurrendered man hopes that God may be capricious. He seems to believe that by being expert in prayer he can persuade a good God to be a little better, especially to him. His prayer would urge God to change his mind about justice enough to give him a slight advantage over the man he competes with. Failing this, he resigns himself to what he considers God’s painful and cruel will, and he calls this surrender. Yet Jesus did not say, “Thy will be suffered,” but “Thy will be done.” Christ did not suggest that we be simply resigned to the will of God but that we actively carry it out.
What a strange experience it is to hear a congregation of believers sing several stanzas of a hymn listing a number of frightful misfortunes each of which, the hymn implies, must be endured because it is the will of God! Yet Jesus said the will of God was done in heaven, and he taught us to pray for its triumph on earth. In heaven there is no pain, no sorrow, suffering, or death. We cannot truly love a God we believe to be a great tormentor, and we must love him in order to become godly. We become, by an irresistible compelling, like that which we love. If we trust God’s will, we are drawn to it.
Many years ago Hans Christian Andersen wrote a story which has become famous about a king with no clothes. People today have reversed the point of that story. They go to church, sing, pray, and take communion. These are the vestments of religion. We have the wrapping, then, but only when we surrender our wills do we come into contact with the King. Instead of being a king with no clothes, religion today has become the story of the clothes with no king. The unsurrendered decide that only what they like and think is proper. They call these personal prejudices the will of God.
The Right Question
The surrendered man does not ask, “What is best for my soul?” or even, “What is best for this church?” He does not even ask, “What is best for humanity?” but, rather, “What function does God press upon me at this moment?” He recognizes that his salvation is only one tiny part of God’s work. He salutes God’s activity as a great symphony of millions of instruments.
What really matters most to you? Is it the perfection of God’s symphony or that others should notice your own clever performance with one little violin? God desires to use us in the most profitable way to his great purpose rather than to our little purpose. Being surrendered means to understand this and to subordinate all other interests to this single fact. Being truly surrendered means finding our place in the vast operation of the universe instead of trying to run a pokey little business on our own. It will determine where we go to church. No surrendered man ever goes to the church of his choice; he goes where he believes God has chosen for him to go.
The surrendered life is identified by its fruit. The first three fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, and peace. Consider these three words. They suggest depth, lightheartedness, and poised steadiness that grow from the fact that our small action is part of the total action of God. Fuss, feverishness, anxiety, intolerance, pessimism, and every kind of hurry and worry are signs of the self-acting will.
God’s people should not behave like that. The simplest test of the surrendered life is the love, joy, and peace that pervades it. This test can be applied anywhere, any time, and about anything. I have noticed that the work of surrendered men has in it something of the leisure of eternity and because of this they achieve more than those enslaved by rush and worry. Surrendered men have better timing, and, as a result, they suffer fewer failures.
Have you surrendered to God?