Surrender
SURRENDER
In Which I Make the Surrender
Matthew 13:44-46; Acts 2:37-42
I have now come to the place in my quest for victorious living where I see that I cannot go on until I make the great decision. I must break down every barrier that stands between me and God; and I must do it withholding no part of the price. But I see I must go further. Not only must I give up every barrier; I must give up myself. I need somebody to master me.
I know that something or other will master me. In the shrine of my heart, I am bound to bend the knee to something. I may bow before myself and take orders from myself, so that self is my ruler. Or I may let sex, passion or money have the final say. Or I may bow before the fear of society and let it dominate me. Or—and this seems my best alternative—I can let Christ master me. I have the choice as to who shall have the final say in my life. I deliberately make the decision: Christ shall have me. There is nothing that is weighed out or measured, nothing that the eye can see; but heart has been given to Heart, will has been given to Will, life has been given to Life. It is done.
As I walked up the aisle of the cathedral in Copenhagen to see the wonderful statue, Bertel Thorvaldsen’s “Christ,” I was almost overcome with awe as I saw the figure with the soft light upon it dominating the whole cathedral. But as I walked along a Danish friend whispered: “You will not be able to see his face unless you kneel at his feet.” It was true, for he was standing with outstretched arms looking at those at his feet. So I knelt at his feet and, lo, his face was looking into mine.
You cannot really see Christ until you bend the knee to him, until you surrender to him. Those who stand far off, surveying him, never really see his face. So bend the knee. Be conquered by him.
Victorious Living
(Week 6, Wednesday)
How Shall I Enter?
Acts 2:37-39; Romans 7:18-20; 8:13
The most delicate moment for many of us now comes as we approach the question of how we may enter the victorious life. We must approach it with a prayer upon our lips and in our hearts.
First of all, there is a difference now in your coming. At first, you came as a stranger and a penitent rebel, knocking at the door for admission. Now you are a child within that home, seeking a deeper and fuller correspondence to the Spirit of the home. You are not asking for admission, but for adjustment. You are asking that everything may be taken out of you that clashes with the Spirit of the home. You can now come with a sense of confidence and assurance, born out of contact with the Lord, that if you meet the conditions, God will meet you more than halfway. The barriers are all within us, not in God.
Victorious Living
(Week 15, Sunday)
Matthew 10:37-39; Acts 5:1-2
The last thing we want to let go is just ourselves. It is the one and only thing we really own. And now Christ with imperious demand asks for that last one thing. It is at this place that the real battle is joined. All else have been skirmishes.
Jesus said with awful decisiveness, “Whoever comes to me and doesn’t hate father and mother, spouse and children, and brothers and sisters—yes, and one’s own life—cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26 CEB). Our families and ourselves must be placed on the altar. This does not mean that we should necessarily leave the family. Here, to “hate” means to “love less,” according to the parallel passage in Matthew 10:37.
A lighted candle casts a shadow when it is put before an electric light. Thus the lesser loves, while really light, cast a shadow when this all-consuming Love makes its demand upon the human spirit. These loves are not to be abandoned; they are to be surrendered. You still live with yourself even after you surrender yourself, so you may still live with your family after you surrender them.
Victorious Living
(Week 15, Friday)
The Fourth Step
Luke 9:23-24; Romans 12:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:23
We come now to the most important step of all: (4) Turn over to Christ yourself and all you have. This is the crucial point, and if you bungle this you block the process. Between two persons there is no love without an inward self-surrender to each other. If either one withholds the essential self from the other, love is blocked; it will not spring up no matter how hard you try to love around and past that core of an unsurrendered self. So between you and God there can be no love without an inward self-surrender. Not the surrender of this thing or that thing, but the surrender of you, the essential you.
Abundant Living
(Week 4, Wednesday)
The Basis of Resentments: An Unsurrendered Self
Matthew 14:3-12; Acts 7:59-60
Remember that at the basis of most resentments is a touchy, unsurrendered self. The fact that we have been able to hold the resentment shows that there is a self that is oversensitive because our will has not surrendered to the will of God. When surrendered to the will of God we throw off resentments as a healthy skin throws off disease germs. Unless there is inner disease or an abrasion of the skin, the disease germs can get no foothold. So, when resentments have gained a footing, it shows that there is a raw, sensitive self underneath that has become a culture for the rooting and growth of resentments. Suspect a self that can grow resentments; it is probably diseased with self-centeredness.
Abundant Living
(Week 9, Wednesday)
The Kingdoms of Class and Money
Romans 1:14; 1 Corinthians 1:20, 26; 1 Timothy 6:8-11
Nor can any enter the kingdom of God unless they surrender the kingdom of class.
When we lose our petty class consciousness, we find a human consciousness and with it a God-consciousness. The class must lose its life to find it again.
The kingdom of money must also bend the knee to the kingdom of God. In our acquisitive society money is god. You succeed in terms of accumulation. Our wealth is measured by wealth. People are “worth” the amount they accumulate. These values are false and must be surrendered. Following the god of money leads into a road with a dead end. . . .
When money is surrendered as an end and offered to be a means to the ends of the kingdom, it is found again. Only those who surrender it enjoy it. To surrender it means to surrender it to God to be used for kingdom purposes.
Abundant Living
(Week 32, Thursday)
Further Steps
1 John 5:13-15
Surrender is important, for there can be no love between persons unless there is mutual self-surrender. If either one withholds the self, then love simply will not spring up. It cannot spring up, for love by its very nature is mutual self-surrender.
The Way
(Week 12, Saturday)
The Word Become Flesh
John 1:14-18
Note that the cults that emphasize self-cultivation, discovering the divine within you, are all based on the universal Christ, not on the incarnate Jesus. Why? Because the universal Christ does not demand self-surrender, but the incarnate Jesus does. The universal Christ is an idea to be accepted; the incarnate Jesus is a fact to be surrendered to and followed. The one appeals to the intellectual conceptions, the other to you—to the whole you.
Do not misunderstand me. I believe in that universal Christ; but, I repeat, you cannot say “Christ” before you have said “Jesus,” for the universal Christ is defined by the historical Jesus. You cannot say “God” or the “Holy Spirit” or “Christ” until you have first said “Jesus.” The gospel begins at Jesus. In him you are confronted with God’s offer and demand, an offer of redemption and a demand to take sides.
There are many religions; there is but one gospel. So the gospel does not stand alongside other religions and philosophies; it confronts all religions, all philosophies, all life, with the good news.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Monday, Week 9)
The Therapeutic Value of Self Surrender
2 Corinthians 4:8-12
The process by which we pass from belonging to ourselves to belonging to Jesus Christ is self-surrender. A great many shy [away] at this term. A young man wrote, “I don’t like your word self-surrender. Seems to me to be weak—an escapist mentality. You turn over your life to Another because you haven’t enough nerve to face life yourself.”
When we turn to the New Testament, we do not find the term self-surrender. But the idea is profoundly there. It is central. And it is becoming central in life as a working way to live. . . .
Let us clear the debris of wrong thought from around self-surrender. It is not weak to surrender to another. The adolescent attitude is an insistence on independence; the mature attitude is to take one’s independence and delegate it, or surrender it, to a higher entity. The individual surrenders sovereignty to the union in marriage; loses his or her life and finds it again in the fellowship of the union. The citizen surrenders sovereignty to the nation and finds a larger fellowship in the community. The individual surrenders sovereignty to God—seeks first the kingdom of God—and all these things are added again, including the self.
When you most belong to God, you most belong to yourself. Lowest at God’s feet you stand straightest before everything else. Bound to God you walk the earth free. Fearing God you are afraid of nothing else. You bow to God, but you do not bow to anything else. You are God’s free person, for you are God’s slave. The strongest persons are those most surrendered to themselves. This works with a mathematical precision, and there are no exceptions. If you are centered in yourself, you are a problem; if you are centered in God, you are a person.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 11, Tuesday)
Steps out of Egocentricity
Luke 14:26-27
First, decide once and for all that you are not God, that God is God, and that you will surrender your life completely to God. The basis of your life now is fundamentally changed from yourself to God. You are no longer a self-centered person; you are from this moment a God-centered person. In the ordering of your life, you are going to listen to God instead of listening to yourself.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 28, Thursday)
Unbreakably Given to Each Other
Philippians 2:1-2
For the Christian demand is twofold: “Unreservedly given to God and unbreakably given to each other.” A double surrender is inherent to God and the fellowship. Many are ready to give themselves to God, but they are not ready to give themselves to the fellowship. For look what we are giving ourselves to: these streaky, imperfect people! There we hesitate to let our weight down. So we stand off, superior and aloof.
I said to a missionary who was troubled over the appointment she was getting, “You trust God in this matter?” “Yes,” she replied, “I can trust God, but I can’t trust the bishop and the district superintendent.” It is a big demand, isn’t it, to trust the fellowship? And yet, if we pull apart from that fellowship, we pull apart from Christ. If we deny the fellowship, we will soon, like Peter, deny Christ.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 37, Wednesday)
A Dart Straight to the Heart of Our Problem
Matthew 19:13-15
The center of the Christian redemption is to save you from yourself. Not that the self in itself is evil, but it is evil if the self becomes the center of itself and becomes God. The first commandment strikes at this: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exod 20:3). And the biggest and most persistent of the rival gods is the self.
So the first Beatitude, in the opening verse of the Sermon on the Mount, begins with: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 5:3). The word poor here is “anav,” “poor by choice.” So it could be translated: “Blessed are the renounced in spirit” or “the surrendered in spirit.” The first thing Jesus struck at in opening his Sermon was self-centered self-sufficiency. Shift the basis of your life from your self to God by self-surrender. Be a God-centered person instead of a self-centered person. God sends a dart straight to the heart of our problem, the problem of the self. That must be laid down before we can go on.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 3, Sunday)
1 Corinthians 2:1-5
We are meditating on the need for a central deliverance, the deliverance from the self. The self needs correction, of course, for you cannot wipe out the self. Put out at the door, the self comes back by the window in various disguises.
But what is the freeing power? It is the cross. The cross silently confronts this self with a demand: surrender! It does it powerfully and pervasively. For instance, here was a boy who had been adopted by a headmaster, who afterward became a bishop in India. The boy was increasingly wayward and rebellious and defiant. The headmaster was compelled to punish him one day after an especially flagrant act of disobedience. He took the rod and told the boy to stretch out his hand. The boy defiantly did so with bravado. The headmaster, instead of laying the rod on the boy’s hand, laid it on his own hand and laid it on hard. The boy, seeing what was happening, cried out with an inner pain, fell at the master’s feet, and with streaming tears begged him to desist and to forgive him. He did so. From that moment the boy was changed. The tyranny of his self-interest was broken. He was forever attached to the headmaster in love. The center was shifted. . . .
The cross conquers the self without violating it. It frees the self from itself and then attaches that self-love to the One who hung on the cross. Deliverance has come.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 3, Friday)
This Serene Assurance
1 Thessalonians 1:2-5
When we are planted in Christ by surrender, then this verse is fulfilled: “Grow out of him as a plant grows out of the soil it is planted in, becoming more and more sure of the faith as you were taught it, and your lives will overflow with joy and thankfulness” (Col 2:6-7 PHILLIPS). When we are rooted in Christ and see our effortless growth, we are more and more sure of our faith. We know that we are made for this; it is our native “soil”; we and the soil are made for each other, and there is a deep affinity. Out of this self-verifying assurance that this is our “soil,” we begin to overflow with joy and thanksgiving. Not a joy and thanksgiving over this or that event, but over the fact that our lives are planted in that which can sustain us now and forever. It is a life joy, not an event joy.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 8, Friday)
The Center of Our Problem: The Unsurrendered Ego
Genesis 4:9; Zechariah 7:6
The things we have been studying as blocks to growth are all pushing us nearer and nearer to the center of our problems: the unsurrendered ego. We now turn to it. For all else is fruit; this is root.
I say “unsurrendered ego,” not the ego. I am sure that the ego is God-created and as such is God-approved and is to be developed. It is not to be canceled or suppressed; it is to be expressed in God’s ways. When the ego has found its place, it has found its place of growth and consequent happiness.
Then just what is its place? Its place is not on the throne of the universe. When Swinburne, replacing God, said, “Glory to Man in the highest” (Algernon C. Swinburne, “Hymn of Man,” 1871), he made humanity ridiculous, for events since have laughed at the statement. Humanity has shown an infinite capacity to trip over itself and to sprawl in the dust of humiliation when we make ourselves into a little tin god.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 10, Wednesday)
Come . . . Take . . . Learn
Luke 18:9-12
So Jesus said, “Come . . . take . . . learn” (Matt 11:28, 29 Moffatt). Note the order: the first thing is our relationship to him—“Come to me.” Settle that, and you settle everything. But you don’t come by just coming; you come by taking his yoke. “Take my yoke”—surrender to his sway. Then you learn—“Learn of me,” for Jesus can teach only those under his yoke, surrendered to him. Religious education, for the most part, with some exceptions, reverses this process and says, “Learn. . . . Take. . . . Come.” Often the process doesn’t get as far as take or come; it stops at the learn. Insofar as it does so, it ends at sterile knowledge.
No, Jesus insisted that we surrender the self, the center of our problems. If we don’t surrender that, the center, we have no right to ask him to solve our marginal problems as they come day by day.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 10, Thursday)
2 Corinthians 10:17-18
It makes us nervous to get close to the center of our problems, to self-surrender. We shy away from it and promise to do anything, anything except that. And the results are not the heaven of self-possession, but the hell of self-losing. A barrenness sets in. This is how one who has tried it describes it, “Two verses describe my condition: ‘Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth’ and ‘Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof’ (2 Tim 3:7, 5). I hate this dominance of myself that has made my life a hell.” The dominion of Christ makes life a heaven, and the dominion of self makes life a hell. That’s all there is to it. Everything else is commentary. And there are no exceptions—none. . . .
The strangest thing on this planet is our fear of surrendering to the one safe place in the universe: God. We hug our present delusions, knowing deep down that they are delusions; but they are present, and we hug them for fear of the unknown. But that unknown is love.
The earth, when it runs away from the sun, simply runs into the dark. When we run away from God, refuse to surrender ourselves, then we get one thing: the dark.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 10, Friday)
A Self You Can’t Live With
Isaiah 14:13; Luke 12:18
If we center ourselves on ourselves, we won’t like ourselves. The penalty is to live with a self you can’t live with. This passage expresses it: “Destruction and misery are in their ways” (Rom 3:16 PHILLIPS), not as a result of their ways, but inherently “in their ways.” So the penalty for an unsurrendered self is a self that you surrender to.
If instead of God you choose yourself, you lose yourself. Life is made that way, and there is no use kicking against the goad, as Paul did and hurt himself. But when you become dependent on God, you become independent of others, and of yourself—strangely enough, independent of your own self. Your self is freed from itself only as it surrenders to Another. This cannot be explained. It must be experienced.
Amazing authority and power come to the self-surrendered. This passage tells of it: “The conqueror I will allow to sit beside me on my throne, as I myself have conquered and sat down beside my Father on his throne” (Rev 3:21 Moffatt). Here is the amazing possibility of sharing the authority and power of Christ, of sitting beside him on his throne. But the secret is in the second portion: “as I myself have conquered.” And how did he conquer? He “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7). The self-emptying became a fullness that “fills the universe entirely” (Eph 1:23 Moffatt). Giving all, he received all, even a throne. And we share that throne; we rule without wanting to rule. We naturally go to the place of authority. It is inherent.
Growing Spiritually
(Week 10, Saturday)
Matthew 17:14-20
The first step in [the disciples’] mastery of the world around them and within them was that they should be mastered. But how? It must all be entirely voluntary. There must be no compulsion except love. They had given up a good deal to follow Jesus—fishing nets, boats, parents, home, occupation—everything except themselves. They had never really surrendered the center, the citadel. They gave the marginal things but not the center. The unsurrendered self was the central block keeping redemption from flooding them. Everything was ready except the receptacle, which was still in their hands, not God’s. Their inmost selves had not been surrendered. So for ten days they waited in prayer in an upper room, asking God for something God was aching to give, if only they would let the last barrier down. It took them ten days to get to the end of themselves. At the end of themselves was the beginning of God. God took over when they turned over themselves. They offered their all, and that cleared the way for God’s all. God can give marginal blessings, but God can’t give the divine self—the Holy Spirit—until we give ourselves unconditionally and absolutely.
Mastery
(Week 3, Thursday)
The First Need: To Belong
Romans 1:1-6
The group [the disciples] in that upper room decided to belong, to make Jesus Lord, to bank their all upon him, to surrender to him. The consequence was that, when they surrendered to him, they didn’t surrender to anything else—everything else surrendered to them! Low at his feet, they stood straight before everything else. Bound to him, they walked the earth free! Belonging to him, everything belonged to them. They were mastered, and as a result became masterful. . . .
Self-surrender was the key. Not world-surrender, as some think, but something deeper—self-surrender. It is possible to give up the world and not give up yourself.
Mastery
(Week 3, Saturday)
John 16:32-33
I was awake at night with a heavy burden upon me. I have learned to turn the wakeful period at night into a listening post; I ask if the Lord has anything to say to me? And in this instance God said, “Yes, I automatically take upon myself everything that falls on you. My love does that. So I’ve got your burden. There is no reason for both of us to carry it. I can do it better than you. So you release it to me.” I did, and fell asleep. And when daylight came, God and I solved it together; I supplied willingness and God supplied power.
Surrender is a catharsis. Instead of “blowing your top” to get rid of the tension, as is sometimes advised by people who don’t have any other remedy, you surrender it to God. The blowing-the-top method is only a temporary release of tension. Resentments pile up again and another blowup is necessary. The unsurrendered self is still there, the cause of the tension.
Christian Maturity
(Week 36, Saturday)
I Am God’s and Forever
Galatians 6:14-17
This surrender of the self is a once-and-for-all business, even when a daily surrender is involved. The daily surrender is not really a surrender of the self, but an unfolding of the once-and-for-all surrender. It is an application to a specific thing of a surrender once made. A friend writes of her victory: “When I said, ‘I am God’s and forever,’ it was the ‘and forever’ that did it.” No surrender is really surrender unless it is “and forever.” That takes our hands off the gift. We don’t give a book to another person, at the same time holding on to one corner. We give it, and we let it go—hands off.
Christian Maturity
(Week 39, Friday)
Rigor of Devotion
Galatians 3:2-5
The Christian faith does not demand rigor of devotion, as if God were a spiritual taskmaster, whipping slaves to bend lower and to be more ardent in self-abasement. . . . And the Christian faith does not demand self-abasement. For you can abase yourself, and all the while be saying deep down, “Look how wonderful I am to abase myself in this way.” You can be proud of your humility.
Attempts to gain salvation through lopping off here and lopping off there, giving up here and giving up there, humiliating yourself here and there are vain attempts at getting rid of yourself through self-abasement. Christianity does not teach self-abasement. But self-surrender does not leave the self intact. Self-surrender is the self moving out of the center and letting God take the center, with the self on the margin, with God in control and the self in obedience. That puts God and you where both ought to be.
Christian Maturity
(Week 40, Thursday)
Place for Ambitious Persons in Christ?
The first thing Christianity demands is self-surrender. The ego, trying to be God, must be renounced and surrendered. Once that surrender is made, however, there is a place in Christianity for the ambitious. The ambition now has a new motive and goal—we are ambitious to serve.
In Christ
(Week 43, Thursday)
To Walk in the Same Way
[Jesus] made a full surrender to God: “not my will, but thine be done” (Luke 22:42). We can apply that principle: a full surrender of the will.
In Christ
(Week 47, Sunday)
Grace upon Grace
Galatians 2:19-21
Grace has law in it, and the law is the law of self-surrender. The gift of grace is a very expensive gift, for if you take the gift, you belong forever to the giver. The giver binds you with cords of love that hold you forever, but you wouldn’t have it otherwise for worlds. So accepting grace is not a mental assent, it is a life response. Jesus gives all, and you cannot give less in return. It is my all for his all and his all for my all. It is mutuality, but not equality, for his all is infinitely greater than my all. But it is my all, and therefore not cheap.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 4, Thursday)
The “This-ness” of the Gospel
1 John 4:13, 17
The Holy Spirit did exactly what Jesus said the Spirit would do, guided [the disciples] into all Truth. For ten days—the ten days that shook and shaped the world—they were guided to surrender this, that, and the other until they came to themselves and they surrendered that last barrier. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, flooded them as if the Spirit had been pent up for ages. This [Pentecost] was the moment. God was to rule persons from within, by their consent, according to a pattern fixed in Jesus and according to a power supplied by the Holy Spirit—from within.
This was the greatest leap forward in the moral and spiritual history of humanity. The Divine Word was becoming flesh in ordinary humanity, very ordinary humanity. Infinite possibilities opened to anybody, everybody, provided they surrendered and cooperated with this divine process. And it was not to be imparted to the learned, but to the willing. That opened the gates to all. No one was barred, except the unwilling.
The Word Became Flesh
(Week 29, Monday)