Surrendering to the Will of God /
FOUR Surrendering to the Will of God Foundation Text— Therefore, Iurge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—which is your spiritual worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what Goad's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. —Rom 12:1-2 However widely Christians may differ on other subjects, however divergent may be their "views" of truth or of doctrine, there is one point upon which every thoughtful soul will agree; and that is, the fact that we all, without reference to our "views" or "doctrines," are called to an entire surrender of ourselves to the will of God. We are made for union with him, and the only pathway to this must of course be a perfect harmony between our will and his. For "how can two walk together except they be agreed?"
Therefore God's commands to us to be holy, are all based upon the fact that he to whom we belong is holy.
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."
—] Pr 1:15-16 (Lv 11:44-45)
36 / The Open Secret In order to be one with him, which is our final destiny, we must be like him in character; and since he is holy, we cannot be "partakers of his nature," without ourselves being holy also.
The Lord said to Moses, "Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the Lord your God am holy. "—Lv 19:1-2 "'Consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am the Lord your
God. Keep my decrees and follow them. Iam the Lord, who makes you holy.'"—Lv 20:7-8 It is because we are the Lord's, and not in order that we may become his, that we are called to be holy. "I am the Lord your
God," is always the ground of the appeal. Not, "I will be your God, if you will be holy," but "Be holy because I am the Lord your God."
Notice the "therefores" in this connection.
You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.—1 Cor 6:20 (2 Cor 7:1) It is because we have been bought with a price, and not in order to induce our Lord to buy us, that we are urged to holiness.
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The eV pais docs 1 not know u us is that i it did not k: yet been ekiowi 1. ress enced shel he appears, we shall ¥ like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.—1 Jn 3:1-3
Having such a hope as this of being one day like him, we are incited now to purify ourselves even as he is pure.
The preliminary step to consecration, therefore, must be to settle once for all the question of whether we belong to the Lord or not, and whether the promises of the gospel are really ours. And then, when this is settled, let us "therefore" present
Surrendering to the Will of God / 37 ourselves in glad and loving surrender to the divine Master who laid down his life to make us his own.
The children of Israel were not called upon to consecrate themselves until after they were saved from Egypt. The law could not be given while they were in bondage to Pharaoh.
Therefore in their history, which is a wonderful type of our spiritual life, they came to consecration only after many other steps had been taken.
We can trace these steps in the four books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
In Exodus they came out of Egypt—answering to our deliverance from the bondage of sin.
In Leviticus they received the commands of God as to how they should order their worship and their lives in the land of promise into which God was leading them.
In Numbers they failed through unbelief to enter into the promised land, and in consequence wandered in the wilderness forty years—answering to the common Christian experience of failure and wandering.
In Deuteronomy they came a second time to the borders of the land and were called to an entire consecration before they could enter in. The commands of God were rehearsed by Moses, and they were asked if they would keep and do them; and this is therefore the book of consecration.
Hear now, O Israel, the decrees and laws I am about to teach you. Follow them so that you may live and may go in and take possession of the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, is giving you. Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you.—Dt 4:1-2 And now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to™ fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to ~ serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord's commands and decrees that I am giving
?—Dr 10:12-13 (Dt 6:1-3)
38 / The Open Secret Consecration means just what the book of Deuteronomy FEIN that we should surrender ourselves to the Lord, to ar, al sep, and dc . It means the choosing of his will Bctore entire else. It means saying yes to him throughout the whole range of our being. It means the leaving of one's whole self in his hands, to be dealt with as he shall please. It means the surrender of all liberty of choice, except the liberty to choose his will and his way.
Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.—Mr 10:37-39
Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?"—Mt 16:24-26 (Lk 14:26-33)
In these passages our Lord himself tells us what consecration means. And in another passage he shows us that it must not be a pretense, a consecration of words only, nor even a consecration of de eh service - only, but that it must be a reality, in the daily doing o Not everyone who says to me, "Lord, Lord," will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, "Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?" Then I will tell them plainly, "I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!"
—Mt 7:21-23 God's purpose in our redemption was our entire consecration. Christians too often look upon consecration as something extra added on to salvation, not necessarily an essential
Surrendering to the Will of God / 39 part; and therefore think it is optional with them to enter into it Or not, as they may please. Whereas the Bible declares that salvation is nothing, if it does not ultimately lead to holiness; for salvation in God's thought is holiness.
"She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins."—Mt 1:21
For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.
It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope —the glorious appearing of our great god and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
—Ti 2:11-14 (Lk 1:68-75; Acts 3:26) It is very striking to notice that of the many announcements made concerning the work Christ came to accomplish, nearly every one declares it to be the deliverance from sim, rather than the escape of punishment. It is a salvation to holiness, rather than a salvation to heaven. Of course punishment is escaped, and heaven is gained, in the nature of things, when we are saved from sin; since the greater always involves the less. But the vital thing in the redemption of Christ is evidently to redeem "from all wickedness," and "purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good."
The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and Iam concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey."—Ex 3:7-8 The thought of God in the deliverance of Israel was not that they should wander in the wilderness, but that they should be brought into the promised land; which land typifies the life of full consecration.
40 / The Open Secret Entire consecration therefore is binding upon every Christian, and sooner or later each one must come to know it.
Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.—Heb 12:14
Our Lord teaches us this in the contrast he draws between the house built on the rock, and the one built on the sand.
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.—Mt 7:24-27 "Building on the rock" here evidently means the hearing and doing the will of God; while "building on the sand" was the hearing but doing it not. The contrast was between consecration and no consecration. There is therefore no alternative. If we would have our house to stand, we must be consecrated, for without consecration it will fall, and great will be the fall of it.
In the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy we have a striking confirmation of this,in the contrast drawn between those who "obey the Lord and carefully follow all his commands," and those who will "not obey the Lord."
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God.
You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
Surrendering to the Will of God / 41 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out—Dt 28:1-6 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country. / Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed. / The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. / You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
—Dt 28:15-19 It is deeply interesting to read the whole chapter through with this contrast in mind. We should make a spiritual application of the blessings and curses spoken of. Our enemies are spiritual enemies; our possessions are spiritual riches; our sight or our blindness are the sight or blindness of the soul, our diseases are the diseases of sin; our hunger and nakedness are spiritual; and our bondage is the bondage of the spirit. As a matter of fact every Christian can testify to the truth of one or the other of these descriptions. Those who know what it is to be consecrated, know also that the promised blessings have been theirs; and on the other hand those who have not consecrated themselves, know only too well how much of the consequent loss and failure have come into their spiritual lives.
Consecration brings the soul into relations of infinite blessedness to the Lord.
"Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him."
Then Judas (not Judas Iscariot) said, "But, Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?"
Jesus replied, "If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching.
42 / The Open Secret These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me."—Jn 14:21-24 You are my friends if you do what I command.—Jn 15:14
Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother.
—Mk 3:35
To be his "friends," to know his conscious indwelling presence, to be as it were his "brother and sister and mother," all these things are surely full of unspeakable worth to our souls.
As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, "Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you."
He replied, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it."—Lk 11:27-28 We may have wished often, in our love for our divine
Master, that we could have held him in our arms and pressed him to our bosoms, but here we see that a present life of consecration is more to be desired than even this.
Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.—Ex 19:5-6 # Only a consecrated soul can know the joy of being God's
"treasured possession." And only a consecrated soul can know clearly the will of God, for obedience is the universal key to knowledge. tiene If any one chooses to do God's will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
—Jn 7:17
The Lord confides in those who fear him; / he makes his covenant known to them.—Ps 25:14
Consecration brings rejoicing. At the first sight of it, the soul shrinks and is afraid; but when it has looked more deeply
Surrendering to the Will of God / 43 into the beauty and blessedness of the will of God, it learns to rejoice. This was the case of the Israelites in Nehemiah's time
(Neh 8:8-10, 12).
After a time of long backsliding on the part of the children of Israel, during which the book of God's law had been lost sight of, it was found again, and the people had all been assembled in the public square of the city to hear it read. At first they wept, but as they understood it better, they saw it was a cause of rejoicing and not of sorrow, and they celebrated
"with great joy because they now understood the words that had been made known to them."
God's will is always our highest joy. He would have us always to "be joyful at our feasts."
Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees.
Celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress.
Be joyful at your Feast—you, your sons and daughters, your menservants and maidservants, and the Levites, the aliens, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. For seven days celebrate the Feast to the Lord your God at the place the Lord will choose. For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.
—Dr 16:12-15 In fact, how can we do other than love the will of our God when we become acquainted with him, and learn to know that his will is the will of infinite love and must be therefore infinitely lovely. No most loving mother's will for her child was ever half so lovely as this sweet beloved will of our God for us. It is something to delight in, instead of to fear; and the words "Thy will be done," when once we understand them, become the dearest words our lips can utter.
Then I said, "Lo, I come; / in the roll of the book it is written of me; / I delight to do thy will, O my God; / thy law is within my heart."—Ps 40:7-8 (RSV)
44 / The Open Secret "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work."—Jn 4:34
Do we "delight" to do God's will? Is it our "food" to do it?
We need to watch against a grudging service. The enemy is always trying to get in the word duty instead of the word delight; he says a stern "you must" instead of the loving "you cmay." When a mother cares for her child from duty only, the tender sweetness of the mother love has gone. When the husband or wife begin to say "I ought" instead of "I delight to" in their relationship with the other, the home becomes a prison. There is no slavery like the slavery of love, but its chains are sweet. It knows nothing of "sacrifice," no matter what may be given up. It "delights to do the will" of the beloved one.
Our Lord can never be satisfied until this is the attitude of our souls towards him. His purposes of grace for us are that there should be harmony between our wills and his: not two wills crossing one another, but two wills made one.
Has it become so with us as yet; can we say that it is our "food" to do his will?
If not, the choice is before us now, and we must decide it.
See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse—the blessing if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today; the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God and turn from the way that I command you today by following other gods, which you have not known.
—Dt 11:26-28 May the Lord enable us to settle the question at once and forever on the side of his will and not our own!
The process of consecration is shown us in Deuteronomy.
The Lord your God commands you this day to follow these decrees and laws; carefully observe them with all your heart and with all your soul. You have declared this day that the Lord is your
God and that you will walk in his ways, that you will keep his decrees, commands and laws, and that you will obey him. And the Lord has declared this day that you are his people, his treasured
Surrendering to the Will of God / 45 possession as he promised, and that you are to keep all his commands. He has declared that he will set you in praise, fame and honor high above all the nations he has made and that you will be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.
—Dt 26:16-19 First, God's command in verse sixteen.
Second, our surrender in verse seventeen.
Third, God's response in verses eighteen and nineteen.
When we have heard the call to surrender, and have declared the Lord to be our God, and that we will walk in his ways and keep his commandments, He always declared us to be his people, and declares that he will make us holy. And from that moment, he takes full possession of us. What can he do but take possession of the soul, that surrenders itself to him? And of course he sanctifies that which is thus his own. The law of offerings to the Lord settles this as a primary fact, that everything which is given to him, becomes by that very act something holy, set apart from all other things for his use alone.
But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the Lord— whether man or animal or family land—may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the Lord.—Lv 27:28
Having once given it to the Lord, the devoted thing thenceforth was reckoned by all Israel as being his, and no one dared stretch forth a hand to retake it.
He must not pick out the good from the bad or make any substitution. If he does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute become holy and cannot be redeemed.
—Lv 27:33
The giver might have felt his offering to be a very poor one, or to have been very poorly made; but having made it, the matter was taken out of his hands altogether, and the devoted thing, by God's own law, became "most holy to the Lord." It was not the intention of the giver nor the quality of the gift that made it holy, but the holiness of the receiver. God's possession of anything sanctifies it. "The altar sanctifies the gift."
46 / The Open Secret Having consecrated ourselves therefore to the Lord, we must from that moment reckon always that we are the Lord's, no matter what the "seemings" may be. We must refuse to admit a question or a doubt, but'must choose always with an unfaltering purpse OF Heart to" have: no will but the will of God. We may not always feel as if we were consecrated, but we may always choose to be, and it is the attitude of our will, and not the state of our emotions, that is the vital thing in our soul life.
If in my will I choose to be all the Lord's, then it is a fact that I am all his, no matter how I may feel about it. We need therefore to attend only to the state of the will in this matter of consecration.
Let us make then a hearty renunciation of our wills to God, and let us from this time onward accept his will as our only portion.
I believe it is safest to come to a definite point in this matter, and to make a definite transaction of it.
A great many Christians acknowledge that they ought to do it, and are always meaning to do it; but because they do not come to the definite point of doing it, it is never really done. I may want and intend to give a gift to a friend with all the earnestness possible, but until I come to the point of actually giving it, it will still remain in my own possession.
If we mean to obey the command with which our lesson opens, when could we find a better time than now? Every hour that we delay we are holding ourselves back from blessing, and are grieving the heart of our Lord.
Now, who is willing to consecrate himself today to the Lord?
—1 Chr 29:5
Laid on thine altar, Oh my Lord divine, Accept my gift this day, for Jesus' sake; —
I have no jewels to adorn thy shrine, Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make, — But here I bring within my trembling hand
Surrendering to the Will of God / 47 This will of mine,—a thing that seemeth small,
And only thou, sweet Lord, canst understand How, when I yield thee this, I yield mine all!
Hidden therein, thy searching eye can see Struggles of passion, visions of delight,
All that I love, or am, or fain would be, — Deep loves, fond hopes, and longings infinite.
It hath been wet with tears and dimmed with sighs, Clenched in my grasp, till beauty it hath none.
Now from thy footstool, where it vanquished lies, The prayer ascendeth, May thy will be done.
Take it, oh Father, ere my courage fail; And merge it so in thine own will, that e'en
If in some desperate hour my cries prevail, And thou give back my gift, it may have been
So changed, so purified, so fair have grown, So one with thee, so filled with peace divine,
I may not know or feel it as mine own, But, gaining back my will, may find it thine.
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