Love and Surrender

Philippians 2:13

13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

A few days ago, I was talking with a young man I've been discipling, discussing with him what it means to be under God's control. The idea he had - and I, too, once had - was that to be under God's control was something akin to being made a puppet. Having submitted himself to God, the Holy Spirit would step into his mind and heart in such a way as to eradicate any impulse to sin, moving him with supernatural clarity and power into a holy, miracle-filled life. In accord with this thinking, he would often pray to God to remove entirely his natural inclinations and impulses that were frequently avenues of strong temptation. Of course, God did not do as he asked, leading to confusion and frustration in the young man. Did God want him to be tempted? Did God want him to fall before temptation? If not, why didn't God answer the young man's prayer to be freed from the impulses that were leading him into sin? Wouldn't that be the simplest, best response to the young man's prayer of submission?

Well, being relieved of fleshly desire would certainly be the easiest path for the young man to walk in regards to dealing with temptation; if God eradicated such desire, the young man could live like God wanted with perfect ease and success! But under this thinking, the young man's prayer of submission to God was actually a request to be made a puppet, controlled utterly by God, the young man's freedom to choose totally suspended.

Can you see the problem? Yes, God works in His children such that they both desire and are able to do His will; but if in order to do so He eradicates their free agency, how do they love Him? By definition, love cannot be coerced; it can only be freely given. A puppet does not love the one pulling its strings, making it dance about. It cannot: it's a puppet.

It is our love, though, that God wants from us. In fact, His First and Great Commandment to us is to love Him with all of our being (Matthew 22:36-38). Like the young man I've been discipling, we've got a problem if we think our submission to God will result in a suspension of our freedom to choose sin. Our submission can't have that result since it would prevent our obedience to the First and Great Commandment. What, then, does it mean to be under God's control?

Being under God's control means to be choosing His will and way at every crossroads of choice between His will and way and my own. As a creature made by God capable of free choice - and love - I must be constantly renewing my choice to be under the control of the Holy Spirit. In fact, my submission to Him is a necessary and vital reflection of my love of God.

I don't know about you, but the temptation to follow my own course confronts me in a myriad of ways all throughout every day. For me, walking in submission to God has been, in large part, a process of recognizing how many crossroads of choice between God's way and my own I stand at each day. I can't wake up and, still abed, submit myself to God for the entire day; for even before I rise from bed, the choice to worry or to trust God confronts me; or the temptation to rehearse a past hurt entices me; or the opportunity to procrastinate presses upon me; or my daily routine, full of mundane "necessities," rushes forward to crowd out any thought of God and the spiritual realities of my life, and so on. Submission to God, then, is not a once-a-day thing, but a near-constant act of yielding myself to His will and way, required at every point at which my will diverts from God’s.

Another fellow I disciple texted me a couple of days ago to tell me he'd been struggling mightily with fear. He'd awaken in the middle of the night plagued by anxiety; he'd rise in the morning feeling a strange, generalized sense of fear; he'd find himself in the middle of the day pushing down a rising sensation of panic. My friend explained that when these moments would occur, he'd pray for peace, quote Scripture, and try to divert his mind to something positive. Nothing helped. He was, then, as you'd expect, very frustrated.

Why wasn't God filling my friend with "the peace that passes all understanding"? Why wasn't God's word dissolving my friend's anxiety? I asked him what happened when he surrendered to God in these instances. He had no answer because he had not been submitting himself to God!

I've done the same as my friend. At a crossroads of choice between my will and God's, my practice in the past has been to acknowledge what God's will is and then to set about making it happen. Like my friend, I'd initiate all sorts of spiritual tactics: Put on the armor of God, quote Scripture, confess sin, read my Bible, pray. But it never occurred to me to meet the crossroads of choice with submission to God. That's too passive a response. God expects me to do something, to be trying, resisting, striving, laboring. Of course, submitting to God is doing something - just not the me-centered action I'd naturally take.

As I've been entering more and more into the practice of constant surrender to God - though, not perfectly - I've realized that God's control of me is always in concert with my agreement to His control. As a love-relationship requires, God will not wrest me around to what He wants in my life, forcing me to accept His rule over me. I must choose, by regular moments of conscious surrender to Him throughout every day, His control. As I do, He works in me both the desire and the ability to do His will (Philippians 2:13; Ephesians 3:16; 2 Corinthians 3:18). What a different way of walking with God! What transformation has finally come, after years of struggling to do for God, by the simple, regular act of sincere yielding to Him! Doing for God now has a substance to it, a powerful, supernatural "fuel," that it never had when I was trying to do God's transforming work for Him, the Holy Spirit no longer hindered in his work in me by my self-will and rebellion.

And rebellion it is, fellow believer. If I am not under God’s control, submitted to His rule, I am in rebellion to Him. There’s no neutral middle-ground on which to stand between submission and rebellion, as so many believers seem to think. So long as I remain out from under God’s will and way, steering my own course, I am a rebel toward God. In such a condition, the Holy Spirit waits for me to place myself under his authority and power before he continues to transform me; for he will not force himself upon me, compelling me to change; love will not allow it.

How many are the born-again believers, though, who are pleading with God for His help, for His peace and power, for freedom from the sin that binds them, who never once think to place themselves under His control? They don’t recognize that the fear they labor under, and the bitterness and anger that sours them, and the lust and addiction that is warping and destroying them, and the spiritual dryness and coldness that they feel all the time are indicators that they have been in control of themselves, that they are sitting on the throne of their hearts where God ought to be seated. The first step in remedying this situation isn’t a greater portion of God’s power, or an instantaneous erasing of sinful desires, but the believer placing themselves before God throughout each day as a living sacrifice to Him. (Romans 12:1) Only as this is done will the Holy Spirit move to bring into the holiness, liberty and joy of fellowship with God, the stumbling, exhausted, sin-bound believer. Not all at once, mind you, but progressively, as the born-again disciple of Christ learns to remain in a place of submission to God consistently and persistently, seeing lust, temper, fear, greed, anger, pride, and the myriad other ungodly things that plague humanity, as indicators of rebellion toward God and thus as signals to return to a place of submission before Him.                   

As I live this way, the changes God works in me happen so naturally, so subtly and profoundly, that I usually don't notice them happening. Gone is the horrible, fleshly, self-crucifixion of spiritual immaturity, the frustratingly inconsistent and tiring struggle of self-reformation. God's transformation of me, accomplished by His power, by His Spirit, is not wrenching and exhausting but joyful, full of rest, and as imperceptible, often, as the growth of a branch from the trunk of a tree. (John 15:4-5)

Have you made submission to God your first reflex at every crossroads of choice in your day? Are you praying to be made God's puppet? Or His loving servant?

Philippians 1:6

6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:23-24

23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

24 Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

Jude 1:24-25

24 Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy,

25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.