Fall… in Surrender.

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:33

There is no magical set of words that give salvation to a lost soul. Repeating a prayer, does nothing. No set of performed acts will ever be sufficient to gain security to our souls. There’s no balance weighing our good vs. our bad. One failure against God’s perfect law is enough to condemn us to an eternity apart from the creator of the universe. God does, indeed, require a full surrender: An acknowledgement of our imperfection in our heart posture, not in words; we must understand what we truly are, sin-sick and separated from the holiness of God by sinful nature; and we must throw ourselves at His mercy, understanding completely that we can do nothing apart from Him. It is truly a mystery that we can both desire sinful things and recognize a hole in our being that can only be filled by our creator. This three part being (body, mind, and soul) that we are, is constantly at war, both with itself and with the God who created it.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23

That moment of birth (rebirth) that we, as Christians, describe is both something that we can’t explain and will never forget. From a battle of emotions and discomfort in our being, to an immediate peace that passes all understanding. We see, as if for the first time, that Christ’s sacrifice for us was both incredibly personal and absolutely complete. That His victory over death gives us that same victory. We move from one life to another: reborn as a new creature endwelled with the Holy Spirit and suddenly everything has changed. Are we perfected in that event? NO, absolutely not! But, our inner being, our soul, has been cleansed and sealed by God and when He comes into our lives that new creature begins to move us in ways we couldn’t have conceived of moments earlier.

He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, Titus 3:5

We experience an immeasurable peace. My own salvation experience as a young teenager can only be described as peace. Moments before, I prayed and my mind was active with thoughts of how to make myself acceptable to a perfect God. In my desperation, I cried out, “I can’t do this without You! You have to help me!” Immediately, my spirit stilled. It was as if someone had hit the mute button on a tv. There was just quiet. In a room full of people praying out loud, my spirit felt an absolute peace. Over the next few days, I noticed that I had changed. Old-time Baptists like me would say, “My ‘want-to’ had changed.” I was still the goofy high school freshman I had been, but my soul had been justified (put back in a right relationship with God) and the Holy Spirit had started His work of sanctification (making me the tiniest bit more like Jesus).

Salvation requires surrender. Nothing from us, no works, no perfect prayer, not one act that we could ever take pride in. Just absolute surrender. And, I guess it has to be that way, because for the rest of our life on earth, we have to do that same thing every single day. Not in the same way, but to walk in a close relationship with the Lord, He asks us to let Him lead. And, the majority of us struggle with it every day. Our flesh still wants what it wants. We’re still human, we still do stupid sinful things. The big difference is, now the Holy Spirit lives in us, and corrects us when we falter, we just have to listen and obey to live a spiritual life close to God.

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Luke 9:23

Daily… daily? Every single day?

All of them.

If we truly want to live for Christ.

This salvation that we received freely, with no payment of any kind from us. Its magnitude is so vast and its weight is so great, that once you experience it, it changes you forever. I once had a student in Sunday School who, in his innocence, said, “I can’t wait until I get saved, so I can do whatever I want.” Oh honey… that’s not how any of this works.

…and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body’s parts as instruments of righteousness for God. Romans 6:13 NASB

You may falter and fall back into sin after salvation, but you will never be happy in it. The living Spirit of God has come to live in your heart and He will not allow you to live ‘happily’ in a way that is not within the will of God. You may ignore that still small voice in your spirit and fulfill the desires of your flesh, you may even pretend that you’re happy. But, in the still moments, in the quiet times, somewhere within your spirit, you will know that you aren’t where you’re supposed to be.

It took me a long time, living the most outwardly Christian life, to come to terms with that fact. I did all the things, but I wasn’t allowing Christ to truly be Lord of my life. I had received that blessed gift of salvation. And I was busy working for Him, from all outward indications. But, there were parts of my life that I held back. Parts that I didn’t want to give up control of. Parts that I felt like I needed to protect. Protect? Did I honestly feel like I could protect anything better than the God of the Universe? It’s not that we think we can do things better than God, I think, we just want things our way.

When I felt the Lord calling me to a deeper place of surrender in my relationship with Him, fear became my biggest hurdle. And, honestly, it has continued to be the thing that can keep me from being where I should be in my relationship with Him. At first, I feared the changes that serving Him fully would require from me. I feared failure. Somehow I knew that what He was asking of me was going to change my life, and it did. And, at nearly 50 years of age, I could identify and name the things that scared me in a very logical way. I knew that if I truly began doing the things he asked, that I would change, that everything would become very much different. I knew enough about the Word and its spiritual power to understand that studying more, praying more, and worshipping more would make me decidedly different than I was. I knew people who lived like that. And, honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I also knew that I was miserable. Not in the way I was before I was saved, but still miserable.

So, I found myself surrendering, again. Not that this was the first time since I was saved, because it is most definitely an ongoing challenge to live close to God. But this time in a deeper way. And it did change my life. It became a hallmark moment of my walk with the Lord. One that I revisit often in my memory. Because, while I gave up a lot of things that I worried I wouldn’t want to lose, I found that drawing closer to Christ was worth every single loss and more. The unadulterated joy that overwhelmed my being made everything that I had held on to so tightly seem like nothing.

• Paul learned the same lesson, far more deeply than I could ever learn. He literally gave up his entire life, and all physical comfort - going from a high ranked Pharisee to one that was beaten, jailed, and attacked multiple times. And still, he said: Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ Romans 6:13 esv

Since then, there have been so very many moments when I have taken a look at my life and recognized something I was holding back from the Lord, often out of fear, since that seems to be my weak spot. For some it’s pride, or vanity, or a host of other issues. For me, instead of trusting what both the Bible and my life have taught me: that He will not leave me, or forsake me, I am very gifted at thinking of all the horrible things that “could” happen.

Most recently, I surrendered, yet again, to being obedient with this blog. As tiny as it is, as few as it impacts, for some reason, it’s important that I do this. I often think, it’s only for my own santification. That by writing down the things that I’m learning, I am forced to see the things that God is trying to show me, and if that’s what it is, that’s fine. Over the past few weeks, I’ve sat through multiple bible studies, Sunday School lessons, and sermons, and have felt the Lord quite obviously speaking to my heart. Not long ago, a dear brother, in his lesson said, “What are you NOT doing that you should be doing for the Lord?” I knew exactly what God was saying to me. I have no doubt that He reached every person in that room if they were holding back from the Lord. A few days later, a Sunday Sermon was amazing in its accuracy. It felt as though God himself was using that sermon to remind me of His faithfulness in throughout my life. His word combats my fear and wins everytime. For the last week, since I’ve committed to writing and studying more daily, I’ve felt as though a huge weight has been lifted.

Fighting the Lord, well, it’s a losing battle. And if you win the battle, you’re losing the war.

You might as well surrender. Of course that’s coming from the girl that struggles with surrender on a daily basis.

So, where is it that you need to surrender? I can’t help you with that, but I know the One who can. If you’ve never surrendered your soul to Him and received his gift of salvation, that’s necessary before anything else. If you’re saved: how is your study life? your prayer life? Are you worshipping regularly? Are you involved with a local body of believers? Are you growing in Him?

I do know that if His spirit lives in you, He will never stop trying to mold you into a more Christ-like person. Whether or not you work with Him and allow Him to transform you, or fight against it and require more pressure. That’s up to you. I can promise you though, that you will never be happier than you are when you’re in the center of His will for your life.

…He must increase, but I must decrease. John 3:30