click on picture for photo credit
Last night, I was watching a Veggie Tales movie with my daughter called “Josh and the Big Wall.” About halfway through the show, one of the characters was trying to convince the Israelites to continue doing things God’s way by telling them, “God’s ways aren’t always easy.” Wow! How true that is!
To that end, I don’t know what all God is doing in my own life but this I do know, I’m asked to surrender.
That subject is the title of a book by Nancy Leigh Demoss, called Surrender.
The word surrender has always been up there with the song, “I surrender all” and the word submission in my book. I am not certain what all of that means, but I do know that I don’t want to do them willingly. 
Surrender sounds like the end of a war. It sounds like the words one yells at the end of a game of capture the flag. I don’t think those terms come easily or quickly.
But they are necessary.
To surrender oneself to God means a bit of sacrifice, giving up of my emotional mindset, my desires, my needs, my wants, to do what God wants.
I loved the examples that Demoss gave: the missionary couples who willingly chose to continue to be with the people who would eventually kill them, those who choose to continue on even when defeat seems certain. What about the example of Christ? He surrendered his rights and his will to the Father’s will. And refused to remove himself from the bloody cross…for your sake and mine.
I think about the surrender that is necessary in ministry too. How one needs to surrender the right to know where and when and how we are going to do this thing called ministry. That’s where I am right now. I don’t know where God has planned for us. But I was reading through this particular book and saw some examples of people who had released their right to know and signed a blank piece of paper for God, saying that they would do His will, even though they didn’t know what it was.
I think that’s where I need to be as well….willing to do anything, rather than having to know what I’m surrendering to first. I’m surrendering to God not to a particular ministry or situation. I’m surrendering my will to His. Wow…that’s freeing. Today and tomorrow and the next day, although I will make mistakes. I will chose the right things sometimes and the wrong things other times. Thankfully, I don’t take this road alone. I go with God. I go in His strength. Walking and failing and getting back up again so that I can again choose to follow this God who gave up all for me to become one of us and to surrender His will to that of the Father’s so that I could choose to follow Him
