One of my favorite hymns is I Surrender All. It starts off by saying, “All to Jesus, I surrender, all to Him I freely give.” It’s a great song to sing, but a hard thing to do.

    I was talking the other day with a friend about the issue of “surrender.” So many times, we wrestle with God, and hold on to things He is calling us to surrender.

    Sometimes we hold on to sin. The Bible says, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” (Hebrews 12:1 KJV) We have a tendency to hold on to sin, which actually hurts us.

    If we believe that God is our heavenly Father and really knows what’s best for us, we should believe Him when He says that something is sin, and is bad for us. We also should believe, that with His help, we can have victory over specific sin in our lives. We wrestle with surrendering to God’s will. His will and plan for our lives, is actually the most exciting and fulfilling place to be.

    Instead of surrendering to His will, sometimes we hold on to what is familiar and comfortable. Jesus said, “Not my will, but thine be done.” (Luke 22:42 KJV)

    He has awesome, exciting things that He wants us to do if we’ll surrender to His will. After all, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10)

Let's honor our mothers today!

    We can surrender to God’s will even when things happen that we don’t understand. He is God, and knows everything. We don’t. Many people want to accept Jesus as their Savior, but don’t want to make Him the Lord of their life. It’s one thing to believe that He exists, and to believe that He died on the cross for our sins, and yet another to put Him in charge and let Him be the boss.

Surrender to God can bring us to the place where we can be saved.
Surrender can free us from sin that hurts us.
Surrender can open the door to a wonderful life of adventure, as we are willing to follow God’s will.
Surrender can bring us peace when we don’t understand His will.
Surrender can bring us to the place that we not only have accepted Jesus as Savior, but also are willing to allow Him to be Lord of our lives.

    Jesus was our wonderful example in every way. If He said, “not my will, but thine be done.” Shouldn’t we say that too, mean it from our heart, and be able to truthfully sing, “I surrender all.”

 

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© Copyright 2003, Mike Barres.

Title: "Surrender"
Author: Mike Barres
Publication Date: May 18, 2003