“And going a little farther, He fell on His face and prayed, saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as You will.’”  Matthew 26:39 ESV

Surrender

Oh, yes, surrender is one of those words we love to hate, or we hate to love. Surrender is one of the most difficult things for us to embrace. We want to be in control and our pride says that we are able to handle anything that comes our way. We want to “do it our way.” When we decide to follow Jesus, however, we enlist in the army of God. We surrender “our way” for “His way.”

When I was a little girl, we sang a song in Sunday school entitled, “I’m In the Lord’s Army.”

 “I may never march in the infantry, ride in the cavalry, shoot the artillery,

I may never fly o’er the enemy, but I’m in the Lord’s army (yes sir!)”

As a child I surrendered to my King, to serve in His army. There was never fear attached to serving Jesus in battle. I knew as I continued to grow that He is fighting with me, for me, and He has never lost a battle, and never will. (I read the last chapter in the Book, so I know how it all turns out. He wins!)

We joined a battle between good and evil. When you enlist in the armed services, you are trained to obey your officer. In boot camp, you are trained to surrender your will for the will of the officer under whom you serve. You do what he tells you without question. You are the property of the U.S. government military services. You surrender and obey your leader’s commands.

I see no difference when we join Jesus. We have an enemy who does not like the fact that we rejected him for Jesus. But we must obey our leader, Jesus, and do what He tells us to do. The instruction manual is the Bible.  One of the instructions Jesus demonstrated by His example is surrender. In the Lord’s Prayer, He taught us to say to our Father in heaven, “Not my will but Yours be done.” I was taught that the safest place to be is the center of God’s will, but for Jesus, the center of God’s will was a place of anguish, a time of suffering, unbearable pain, and sorrow.

In our surrender, we must totally give ourselves to God in the same way God gave Himself for us, holding nothing back. He gave His all for us. There was not an easy way out for Him. Are we willing to surrender even though there is not an easy way out of hard circumstances?

“Lord, help us to surrender our pride, petty grievances, and offenses against anyone, and to put on our armor and fight the battles before us on our knees before Your throne.”