How are commitment and surrender different for us? Looking at how the attitudes impact significant areas of spiritual life helped clarify the differences.
Priorities - In large degree, our secular culture measures a person's worth in terms of success, winning, and accumulating. In this view, where winning is everything, surrender is unthinkable--even surrender to God. Commitment is acceptable, but surrender is considered foolish and perhaps dangerous. All that is associated with surrender--yielding, submission, obedience, self-denial, dying to self--either falls on deaf ears and hard hearts or else evokes hostility from those of us saturated with Western standards.
I once served in an exceptionally difficult ministry situation on the island of Maui. (I know what you're thinking, but it really was tough.) After a couple of years, I decided to get out, and put my name in my denomination's candidate pool to be considered for a different situation. Nothing happened for more than a year. One day, after whining to God about it, I just gave up. I said, "Lord, if you want to leave me on this rock for the rest of my life, that's up to you." I did not decide to stay or leave; I just left it up to God. I believe God was waiting for me to pray that prayer. My commitment in that place had long since expired, but my surrender to the Lord opened the door to joy and peace and effectiveness.
I served in that position for two more years - joyfully - until I was called to another congregation. Looking back, I now see the damage that could have been done to my family, the Maui church, and the new church, if I had insisted on forcing my will into that situation.
Discipleship - My repeated failure to live up to my commitments has been an overwhelming source of frustration in my Christian walk. A growing desire emerged to get off the merry-go-round of making promises to God and to embrace the simple, joyful life of believing God's promises. I needed a surrendered heart in place of a list of commitments and goals, accomplished or not.
As Mary Poppins said, we make piecrust promises all the time - easily made and easily broken. Every time we use a credit card, we are promising to pay for that meal or DVD or plane ticket. We hardly think about it, but that habit of making easy promises often is at work in Sunday-morning pledges to God or the church or self... to change or do or go or give. And, like credit cards for many, we are surprised and overwhelmed when those promises accumulate and we are unable to honor the debt we have created.
When I first learned to have a quiet time, it was a major struggle to spend ten minutes in prayer and Bible reading each morning. Wanting more, I proudly and piously committed to half an hour a day, then one hour a day. I found I could not live up to the commitment. Things might go well for a few days or weeks, then I would fail my standard. I felt defeated instead of blessed. After I discovered the meaning of surrender, I learned to let the Lord set the agenda and draw me to Himself. I was astonished, not at the length of my quiet times, but at the discovery that the Lord sought me throughout the day. My time with God was no longer an obligation but an opportunity.
Relationship - Commitment sets limits or boundaries to relationships. Commitments are always partial and restricted. Commitment makers never give away the farm, but carefully define limits of time, cost, etc. Surrender gives away the farm... and everything on it. The multitudes in the John 6 episode demonstrated the limit of how far they would follow Jesus. They had reached their self-defined spiritual boundary and would go no farther.
Commitment is the mindset of the consumer; surrender is the attitude of the beloved. God woos us and paid dearly for our love. Christ invites us into relationship with Him, but He does not bargain or renegotiate. The Twelve continued to enjoy intimacy with the Lord because they were willing to follow wherever He led. They did not yet fully understand what being a follower meant, but they knew who had the words of eternal life. They were in love with Jesus and trusted Him totally. Commitment invites Jesus along for the ride, but surrender gives Him the steering wheel... and signs over the title of the car too.
How Do I Surrender to God?
My choice was that I had no choice but to surrender. But how was I to go about it? Jesus gave us the answer: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). There is no more elegant and simple description of surrender than these ancient words.
Taking up my cross daily means to pursue God's will in the place of my own. Surrender is setting aside my ambition and agenda and desires in order to pursue God's. Jesus perfectly demonstrated this surrender at Gethsemane when he prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42).
The surrendered disciple prays like her surrendered master, saying "Father, if my problem or pain or illness or loneliness can be part of accomplishing your will, do not take it away."
Jesus' invitation of "follow me" means to obey Him absolutely. While drinking coffee early one Rocky Mountain morning at our favorite vacation campsite, I suffered another head-whacking reality check. At my age then, I collided with the indisputable fact that I could reasonably assume about three-quarters of my life and ministry had passed. The question that emerged was, How will I play the last quarter? Going through the motions? Sitting on the bench? Playing it safe? Finishing strong?
I did not know what or where "follow Me" meant here, but I somehow understood that this was a surrender moment. Pulling out an old sports cliche', I prayed, "Lord, I want to leave it all on the field." I never imagined the great adventure the Lord had in store for me, spiritually and geographically.
The Surprise of Surrender
In Absolute Surrender, Andrew Murray wrote, "We find the Christian life so difficult because we seek for God's blessing while we live in our own will." Making commitments can be our subtle attempts to get God's blessings while holding on to our own authority and lifestyle. Many fear that surrender will cost too much or make them miserable.
The surprise of surrender is that by giving control of everything we have and are to God we gain the blessings we desire. That is counterintuitive to our human nature, but Jesus promised, "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it" (Matthew 16:25).
Giving control of my life to God means I am not in control... and what a relief that is! It is the secret source of peace. Failure, frustration, and disappointment are the legacy of commitment, because it is always about me and depends entirely on me to achieve some outcome. Surrender takes "me" out of the equation. As I heard a person once say, "When I began to follow Christ, I resigned as General Manager of the Universe."
When I acknowledge that Jesus is my sovereign and not my peer, He begins to transform me. C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, "The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become." When we deny ourselves, we find ourselves.
In my surrender journey, I have discovered joy and delight and peace. I feel less pressure to achieve. I do not have to struggle to solve every problem. I do not have to fight to protect what I have. I am less concerned about the future and enjoy today more. I am learning to trust my absolutely trustworthy master.
Of course, the inconvenient truth is that if we are not surrendered, we are not really free and in control at all. The Bible says we are either slaves to sin or surrendered slaves to Christ.
I must choose to surrender to Christ. I do not want to leave him. Where else would I go?
_____________
BOB BUTLER is 30 60 100 MINISTRIES contact and facilitator of the Spiritually Healthy Leader Series in SE Asia. We will see him in April when Vicki and Dalton go to Cambodia to teach the workshops in Phnom Penh.
No comments:
Post a Comment