THIS BEING IN Christ seems to some to be in bondage—you are not in yourself, and you are not in the world if you are in Christ. This is our basic fear—the fear of losing our freedom. Surrender means a surrender of our freedom.
I spoke to a very influential group in Washington, made up of diplomats, several generals, and the secretary for defense. I spoke on surrender as the key to the Christian faith. The secretary for defense arose at the close and said: “I appreciated everything the speaker said, but I inwardly balked at that word ‘surrender.’ I deal with a group of people among whom the word would not be very popular or acceptable.” I assured him that we surrender to God, but we don’t surrender to anything else. Low at His feet we stand straight before everything else. Moreover, His will is our freedom. Bound to Him we walk the earth free. When we are most His we are most our own. “That changes the picture,” he replied thoughtfully.
Many in our churches have a wrong mental picture of what surrender to Christ means. A psychiatrist, brought up in a straitlaced missionary home where pigtails and long black stockings were signs of conformity and piety, reacted against it and was afraid of the power of Christ in a mental institution where people were in desperate bondage to themselves. She confused being in Christ with being in a system. Jesus was crucified because He wouldn’t conform to a system. He said, “if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). In Christ, there is an “indeed” freedom.
O my Lord and Savior, Thou dost bind me to Thy heart and set me free at the same moment—free to love, to live, to grow, to enjoy with joy unspeakable and full of glory. I open my arms to Thy bondage, for my heart wants freedom. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If I don’t surrender to God, I will surrender to things.
