January 24th, 2010
Total Surrender
Galatians 5:16-26

The word “life” refers to many things. When I think about the concept of “life,” my mind tends to jump to physical life and death first; but there is physical and spiritual life. There’s the concept of what I do before I die as my “life” and we talk of things having a “life of their own.” Physical life is a precious thing: it is something we have all received without earning it and can‘t generally get back if we lose it. We all have questions about our lives at one point or another and, while I don’t have as many years under my belt as some people, here are some questions I have asked or probably will ask over the years. See if they sound familiar to you. Will my life end up the way I want it to? How is my life going? What do I want out of life? Have I missed out on life? How and when will my life end?

Many of these questions are raised with increasing urgency as we become more aware of the fact that we all die someday. While young people tend not to think of the end of their life, that steadily advancing finish line can really freak some of us out! One of my counseling professors in graduate school said, “In general, we are so afraid of death that we don’t even like using the word. We use more gentle terms like ‘is no longer with us’ or ‘has passed away’ and so on.” Perhaps one reason we have such a hard time dealing with death is because it is the final, irrefutable reminder that we don’t have as much control as we would like to believe we have. We can eat right, exercise and live carefully - and we should - but we will still die one day… and sometimes the healthiest people get cancer, and we have no explanation for that - my own uncle was a fantastic athlete, in excellent physical condition who died of cancer at age 50. So if, when push comes to shove, I have so little control over my very life, should I really think of it as mine? It was given to me before I was able to ask; I did nothing to earn it or deserve it; and it will end, possibly not when I expect it to, and I will have very little direct influence on when that happens. So is this really my life?

But if it’s not my life, then whose is it? This question refers to control - another thing that we’re generally afraid of losing. After all, we control a lot here in the U.S.! As a nation, we try to control our situation in the world and our safety. We speak highly of freedom because we believe people should have control over their own lives. As individuals, we control the temperatures in our houses and cars. We control, or try to control, what job we have and what we do with our time, and when we struggle with that, we speak of things getting ‘out of control’ (and always in a bad way). I’m not suggesting we purposely get out of control in our lives but may I suggest something that seems like ultimate selfishness and selflessness at the same time. Perhaps we can think of handing control of our life to God because He could do more with this life than we ever could. He is more in control than I could ever hope to be. We see in the Bible that He has power over life and death and so much more, so it makes sense to shift our view from what I want to do with my life to what God wants to do with this life He has given me to live. This is surrendering my life to God. To surrender means to give over control. This is surrendering my life to His Spirit.

In the Bible, when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, he responds with what we know as The Lord’s Prayer. A certain line in that famous prayer goes, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” To say to God, the King of kings, “your kingdom come” is to say that I want to be subject to the King - I want to surrender to the King my right to have the final say in my life, because that’s the position a king is in! The king has the final say, so that‘s what I‘m asking for. Beyond that, to say, “your will be done” is to say that my will will not be done if it in any way differs from God’s will. What we’re saying is that anywhere my own desires or plans or decisions would disagree with God’s, I’m going God’s way instead of mine. That’s the prayer. This all seems to hinge on knowing God’s will. How does that work?

Does God actually speak to us? How does He tell us His will? He speaks to us through scripture, through prayer, through nature and quiet time spent with Him. He speaks to us through worship and through the community of believers around us. Sometimes people doubt that God can speak to them in one of these ways - but let’s take scripture as an example. Looking back in history, the reformation happened largely because Martin Luther and others believed that God could speak through His word to ordinary people. This was one of the early bases of the protestant church - and we still believe that. Education is important - and we encourage each other to keep learning how to read, study and understand the Bible better and better. While we are still learning, however, let us not forget that the Word is alive - that God wants to speak to us through scripture. By the way, if you haven’t read much of the Bible before, may I suggest starting in the book of John.

So God wants to speak to each of us. Before Jesus left earth, He said that He would send His spirit to be a counselor and to guide us into all truth (John 16:13). So as we want to hear God speak, we listen for the Spirit to be our counselor and guide. In Galatians 5, Paul reminds us that God’s way is for us to love one another and says that it is as we live by the Spirit that we become able to truly follow God‘s way.

So what does it mean to live by the Spirit? According to Paul, living by the Spirit means living in freedom - not freedom TO sin, but freedom FROM sin. He speaks of a struggle between our sinful nature and the Spirit. The words Paul uses here are not referring to a personal psychological struggle or the struggle within a person’s soul. Rather, the war has to do with which power we belong to, body and soul. Do we belong to the Spirit or to the flesh? (NIV application commentary on Galatians, Scot McKnight & E.P. Sanders) This is where Paul then refers to the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is one of the most well known passages in the Bible.

As a kid I grew up learning the fruit of the Spirit and I could pull them out on cue - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Notice that the word fruit is singular. This is all one fruit. It’s all one package deal! I can’t say, “Oh, I have kindness and gentleness, but not patience” or “I’m full of love and joy, but God didn’t bless me with self-control!” Some things are easier for us, and some are more difficult, but when I am living by the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit is evident in my life, ALL of these things will be there together.

Looking back in my own life, it was a few years ago that I finally understood the concept of the fruit of the Spirit in a new way. I was going through a bit of a difficult time and found myself struggling with a lot of doubt and frustration at my apparent inability to live up to who I knew I should be. I wrote the fruit of the Spirit on a white board and just stared at it for several hours. I was praying, “God, why do I have such a hard time being loving? Why am I so impatient? Why do I struggle so deeply with self-control?”

Suddenly it hit me. It was one of those light-bulb moments. The Bible doesn’t say that the fruit of my hard work, my dedication or my good intentions will be these things - it’s the fruit of the Spirit. The trick, so to speak, is right there - the fruit, or result, of the Spirit acting, guiding, leading in my life will be those things. The only way for the Spirit to be making the decisions, acting and living through me is for me to let go, for me to surrender my desire to do what I want to do, or think should be done. I must surrender to the Spirit at every turn or else it will be MY fruit showing up in my life and not the Spirit’s fruit (and the text covers our fruit in some not-so-glorious terms earlier in the passage!).

Growing up in Zambia, the house where we lived had a large, old orchard - filled with wild lemon trees. Why would someone fill an orchard with wild lemons you ask? They didn’t! Wild lemons don’t taste particularly good, they’re knobbly, and seriously, who needs that many lemons anyway? The reality is that the original intent of the orchard was to use the strength of wild lemon tree roots and graft other trees on top. This process, where you take the top half of one tree and literally stick it onto the bottom half of another tree (well, it’s more scientific than that, but you get the picture) results in the roots of one tree and the branches of another - growing as one. By this method, this orchard benefited from the strength of wild lemon roots but produced all sorts of other fruit! The thing is, without careful tending, these trees can eventually turn back into wild lemon trees.

I’ve heard this analogy used in various ways, but let me put a different spin on it. In terms of surrendering, of giving up control to the Spirit, I think of it like this: the Spirit is the wild lemon tree, the roots that ground us, but we are not producing the fruit of that tree unless we surrender and allow that essence to overcome us or until we become merely an extension of those roots. Then the fruit evident in our lives will be the fruit of those roots, the fruit of the Spirit.

We surrender when we follow the Spirit in the tough decisions. We surrender when we go God’s way instead of our way.

In order to surrender totally, we must be willing to surrender the most difficult thing that could be asked of us. After all, if I surrender 99% but am unwilling to let go of that last piece – I am not totally surrendered, and you can bet that Satan will bring everything he can to focus on that last piece in order to keep you from totally following God. So we must look inside and be willing to surrender the very thing that is most difficult for us to surrender. Note that I did not say we must automatically give it up, but be willing to surrender. I am a people person. I believe that God has put a passion for people in my heart for a reason, but if I am unwilling to give up being around people if God asks me to, then I am not fully surrendered to the Spirit. So what is it that would be most difficult for you to surrender to God? Perhaps it’s safety and security such that you couldn’t go to a dangerous place for God. Perhaps it’s financial stability such that you couldn’t take a low-paying position for God. Perhaps it’s a relationship that distracts you from your faith. Perhaps it’s a good reputation such that you won’t speak out against socially accepted injustice. Perhaps it’s your dreams such that you won’t let God suggest a path. Perhaps it’s life itself such that we would be unwilling to die for our faith. These are all legitimately difficult to surrender, and let me say once again that God will not automatically take these from us, but the question is, are we willing to give them up if He calls us to?

In the dark before dawn, a man was walking on a forest path when a small bird flew down and perched on his shoulder. “Friend,” said the bird, “if you will allow me, I will show you a day you will never forget!”

A short while later, there was a fork in the path. “Go right,” said the bird. The man looked and saw a steep path to the right, zig-zagging up rocky slopes. The rocks were sharp and it looked dangerous. To the left the path continued smooth and straight. “You can make it,” said the bird.

“It is too steep and sharp” replied the man, “I have too far to walk to risk getting hurt now.” So the man took the path to the left and continued on his way.

Later in the day, the bird said, “Turn off the path here.”

“There is no way through the woods here,” replied the man.

“Make a way,” said the bird, “you can do it - I will show you where.”

The man said, “I might never find my way back to the path” and continued on his way. Later still, an overgrown path left the trail and headed through thorns and thick vines. “Follow this path,” said the bird.

“There are too many thorns and vines,” said the man, “I don’t have the strength to fight through them all.” … and he continued on his way.

At the end of the day, the man said to the bird, “I thought you said you would show me a day I would never forget!” to which the bird replied, “I wanted to, but you would not listen. If you had climbed the rocky path, you would have seen a stunning sunrise over the valley. If you had made a path where there was none you could have rescued a deer trapped in a vine. And if you had fought your way through the thorns you would have seen a beautiful waterfall into a crystal clear pool.”

There are always reasons to stay on the path of our life, but if we are to honestly pray, “Your will be done” and if we are ever to see our lives saturated by the fruit of the Spirit, we must be willing to follow God in scorn of everything that tells us not to. If we are faced with a decision where everything - our desires, our logic, our education, our experience, our fears and even our friends - say to go left but God is pointing right, we must go right or we will see the fruit of me and not the fruit of the Spirit.

This kind of trust is what is required in total surrender. We see this trust when Peter gets out of the boat to walk on water toward Jesus in Matthew 14. As John Ortberg says in his book, “If you want to walk on water you’ve got to get out of the boat,” it is a risk we take - trusting God with our very lives, against all reason, to do something bigger in us than we could do on our own, but it is in those acts of faith that we grow and it is in those choices that, I think, God looks down on us with a perfect father’s love and smiles, saying, “You trusted me! I will faithfully do more than you ever expected!”

That God asks us to trust Him by surrendering ourselves to His will, and consistently says, “Do not be afraid” (in fact, that is the most common command in all of scripture!) hints that God knows more than I do and is more powerful than I am. We may think that that’s pretty basic and straightforward but when push comes to shove and God is asking us to get out of the boat, to surrender my will to His, I fear that we sometimes demand that God’s plans fit our understanding before we will follow them. In John 7:17, Jesus says to obey Him and then we will understand. The obeying comes first and is followed by the understanding. To insist that God’s plans fit my understanding is both prideful and keeps me from actually understanding God at a deeper level. After all, God had some pretty harsh things to say to Job when the way God was acting was called into question. His response was along the lines of “who are YOU to question God? Where were YOU when I made the universe? How much control do YOU have over the fabric of existence? I am God - and you are not!”

Of course, we need to exercise wisdom in discerning when God is calling us to a decision we cannot fully understand, something that is bigger than us, because God’s desire is not for us to do stupid things and demand that he rescue us! When I think of discernment, faith and surrender, I often think of my parents heading off to Zambia. Many of you have known my parents for years, especially since my Mom grew up right here in Grantham. They headed off to Zambia as missionaries back in 1969 and have been a part of the extended Grantham church for all of their 40 years there.

When they went to Zambia, however, they were acting with a great deal of faith - surrendered to what God had called them to in spite of how it looked! While they had prayed and experienced multiple affirmations that it was God’s will (exercising discernment and all wisdom available), they were an Ivy-league educated couple who essentially packed up their life and headed off to a developing country in the middle of Africa with little more than their luggage and a letter from the Zambian government saying, “Come on over, we’ve got a job for you.” By so many standards in this world, it made no sense (and they have been told to their face that they are “fools”). It seemed like a waste of their education, a waste of their time, and a foolish decision. That it is was a dangerous place to raise children made it seem all the more ridiculous for a young couple, and yet God has worked in their life, leading them on an amazing adventure with Him! There have been many times of struggle and hardship, but they now look back and say they wouldn’t change it for the world! In Zambia, men do not cry publicly, and yet my parents have had successful Zambian businessmen tell them through tears that my parents’ love for students in a government school back in the 1970’s was what changed their life. They have a legacy that is larger than they could ever have dreamed of themselves! It is a legacy of God working wonders through their willingness to follow!

I’ve found that in my life, what makes it most difficult to surrender my life to Christ so completely is a strong fear of being out of control. I find myself wondering if I can truly trust God with my life. What will He ask of me? How will things end up - and can I live with it? Does He care about what I want in my life? While I was writing this, I was talking with a friend who pointed out that God is the only one who can control my life without destroying it. If I hand my life over to money or my career in pursuit of my dreams, I may lose my health, lose the zest that God gave me in this life, or even lose my family. If I hand it over to alcohol, pursuing a perfect image or something else that promises solutions, it will gradually choke the life out of me. But God is able to bring life, to give life, to fill me with so much life that I can’t hold it all in!

He is a God who is not overly focused on what we accomplish in our life. He wasn’t so concerned with Peter being able to walk on water that he let him drown when he failed. This is the God who says, “Come” and then reaches out to keep us up when the storms of life take our attention off of Him. This is a God who says, “Do not be afraid” because He is entirely trustworthy, and besides, this is the God who is such an artist, such an author, that He can create the most astounding and captivating adventure we could imagine if we will just give Him the pen in the story of our life. The God who can paint the sky with color can paint a masterpiece on the canvas of my life - no matter who I am or where I am in this life.

I took this picture (of a sunset) from the back door of this church. When I see a view like this, I can’t help but be thankful that this artist God of ours is even interested in painting on the canvas of my life - what beauty He can bring. When I see this, why would I ever try to keep the paintbrush in my own hand? This beauty is all around us. (The picture was from the intersection of Grantham and Mill just up the road.) As I was writing this message, it seemed that almost every day God was surprising me with another stunning sunset. If it weren’t so frigid, I probably would have taken more pictures of them! It brings me back to this simple truth though: if God can create such remarkable beauty in the every-day things, what could He do with me? The reality is, God does remarkable things every day with everyday people – and God can do more with this life than I could ever dream. Let’s totally surrender our days, our decisions, and our direction in this life and allow the master story-teller to create an incredible and beautiful adventure of faith, trust and love in our time on earth! Let’s surrender the paintbrush to our artist-God and allow Him to paint a masterpiece on the canvas of our lives!