Surrender

There is a wonderful old traditional Christian hymn that says “I Surrender All – All to Jesus I Surrender, I Surrender All” – I love that old hymn, and singing it stirs my emotions – but I wonder how many of us think when we sing that hymn, just what it is that we believe we are surrendering to Jesus? For several years now, I’ve been part of a group which meets each Wednesday morning, to study God’s Word, and to try to understand what purpose God has for each of us here on earth.

Some time ago we were sharing what it means to surrender to God – our past, our present, our substitute idols, and our future. And, in the process we looked at just what the word surrender means. My dictionary says that to surrender is “to give up one’s control over circumstances to a greater power”. And, we usually think that the process of surrendering is involuntary – something we are forced to do. But, God has given us free will, and so surrendering to him is something we must decide to do ourselves, and we can decide to do that - because we know that He is ‘THE greater power’ in our lives, and we have learned to trust Him.

One of the areas of our lives that we all find difficult to surrender to God is our past. There are events, people, circumstances in our past that have caused us grief, anger, pain – and all too often we hang on to the hurt far too long. We can’t change the things of the past, but we can surrender them to God. They do not need to be chains around our necks forever.

Sometimes, because our faith in God’s promises are weak, we substitute other things in our lives; money, prestige, cars; big homes – these become the things we worship because they’re tangible, they define who we are, and they become the most important things about our lives here on earth. For many it is not possible to surrender these substitutes – but they are no substitute for life eternal through Jesus Christ.

And, because we live in the present, it’s a challenge to surrender each day to the Lord – when annoyances, aches and pains, and difficult people afflict us - when we want very much just to live peaceful, happy, contented lives. It takes a lot of faith to trust in God and surrender each moment, of every day, to Him.

An even more difficult thing to surrender to God is our future. I think one of the strongest desires in life for us all, is a desire to control everything that happens to ourselves and to our loved ones. As we go through life, and in particular as we live on in succeeding decades of life; we find that our ability to shape or control events around us diminishes. But a real blessing is that in that process of living, we have also found that it becomes easier to trust God for our future.

For many years I was privileged to serve in my Parish as the Rector’s Warden, and as the People’s Warden, and in those positions of responsibility was often challenged by events or broken relationships. Many times I saw God working for good in difficult circumstances. I learned a great deal about trusting God. Sometimes it’s hard to step back from those positions of responsibility, but God made it quite clear to me a few years ago that it was time for me to surrender that area of my life. Because I’ve learned to trust him, it has been wonderful to see how he has blessed others as they have taken on those responsibilities.

In the Philippians scripture we read in Chapter 3:5-11, the Apostle Paul has listed all the great reasons he had for being an outstanding leader in the Jewish community, but he says “For Jesus sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ”. Paul truly had ‘surrendered all to that ‘higher power’.

I have come to the conclusion that developing the faith in God that we must have in order to ‘surrender all’ – is often a process of a lifetime. We see God’s glory all around us, and we see God’s hand in events of our life, and we learn to trust him. But it sure is not easy.

Even the Disciple Peter, who had been with Jesus from almost the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, didn’t have an unequivocal faith in Jesus – as we see in Matthew 14:22-31. Peter had already seen Jesus do all sorts of miracles, but when Jesus called Peter out of the boat, to walk on the water, he was okay for a short while, but he got frightened when he saw the storm on the water. Sometimes, in the storms of our life, we too may get frightened and find it hard to focus our faith on Jesus. But he will always be there. †