Surrender

"Mine" is a word we tend to learn pretty early in life. When we, as children, first begin to realize that there are things that we can call our own, we are, no doubt, thrilled to elation, judging by the overwhelming horror children seem to manifest when "their" toy is taken away. What a cruel reversal of fortunes then, when we reach adulthood and realize that maturity is about responsibility, sacrifice, and other such concepts that go utterly against that "mine" instinct. And it gets even worse if we decide to follow Christ, and he asks us to surrender--not simply making some sacrifices and compromises here and there, but actually saying, "My most precious possession, my life, is no longer mine."

I'm speaking in worldly terms, as if it's a bad thing, when it's actually the best thing in the world. When we first decide to surrender, we feel the liberating power of it, and then how quickly we begin to think, "What have I done?!" Because even though in the moment, we know, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, that's it right, we can't possibly understand all the implications. Fortunately, we serve a God of infinite kindness and patience, who allows us to work out the details as we go along. He doesn't make us sign a prenup!

Spiritual growth can essentially be summed up in this way, as a gradual working out of the terms of our surrender--a gradual loosening of this "mine" instinct that we formerly grasped onto with all of our power. I was in a church service recently, and one of the songs played during worship was the great hymn "I Surrender All" (if you know me well, you know about my love for hymns.) The refrain goes:

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to thee, my blessed Savior
I surrender all

I had a hard time singing along at first because I thought it would be a lie. I couldn't honestly say that I had surrendered quite everything to Jesus just yet. I'm not sure that I ever will on this side of eternity. But then I decided to make the words a prayer, that God would give me the strength to surrender more and more to him. I started to think about what I needed to surrender, and the combination of my love for hymns and the power of this prayer began to overwhelm me.

What was I surrendering that day, you ask? What had I been holding on to? My right to define my own self-worth. My insistence on obtaining significance and value from performance and from other people's opinions of me. I was surrendering my greed--greed for respect, admiration, honor, and the esteem of my peers. As I surrendered, and to continue to surrender, all of those things, I make room for God. He's the only one who loves us unconditionally. He created us; he died on a cross for us; he has forgiven and restored us; he has made us righteous. He should be the only source of our sense of self-worth. My value comes not from what I can do or the tasks I can perform or the things I can produce. It doesn't come from how well-liked or respected I am by the people around me. It comes only from God's unconditional, unimaginably high, deep, wide, long love for me.

Just earlier today I struggled with this issue again, as I'm sure I will continue to. Something someone did made me feel like they didn't respect me or value what I had to say. I felt rejected and excluded. And then I thought about the fact that I haven't been rejected at all. In fact, I've been accepted by the God of the Universe. And the only reason I got upset was because I had forgotten that, and was once again desperately trying to derive self-worth from others, even to the point of overreacting to a false perception of rejection that wasn't even intended to be mean or disrespectful. I apologized for my overreaction, and in doing so, I won a small victory against my "mine" instinct. I surrendered the mindset of, "I deserve and demand the respect that I crave," and I allowed the love of God to replace it.

I hope these words can encourage you to surrender something that you're holding on to.