Surrender to His Will (21 Days of Surrender #1)

Today I have the immense pleasure of handling God’s word as we start a new year and go into 21 days of prayer. This year the theme is surrender.

Honestly, when I was asked to preach the kickoff, I could not remember why we started doing this at all. So I went to Erin and asked.

Why We Do This at All

We have been doing it since 2018. Converge reached out in the autumn of 2017 saying they were doing something for the new year and wanted us to participate — which kicked it off that January.

A year went by, and Erin assumed it had been a one-off. At an elder meeting in the autumn of 2018 the subject came up again, and he was not especially inclined to repeat it. Then two elders — who shall remain anonymous — spoke up and admitted they had not exactly participated the first time, and perhaps we ought to try again.

We have done it every year since. It has become part of what this family does. Families have rhythms and traditions, and this is one of ours.

The deeper point is that this rhythm is a wise thing. It is proper to set aside time for God’s word deliberately — and to do it corporately, as a group, because it gives us something in common to discuss and to struggle with alongside one another. Is that not the whole point? That we can talk about difficult things, our trials and our troubles, and have somewhere to bring them. If this is one brick in that wall, thank God it is being laid.

But why twenty-one days? That is a little odd too. It is not a prescription, and it is not a random number either. There are sets of seven throughout Scripture — God’s completed work in six days of creation and a seventh of rest. Prayer and fasting sometimes runs three days, sometimes forty, but forty is Lent.

Looking back for a model — not a prescription, a model — there is one in Daniel 10:2–3: “In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks. I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth, nor did I anoint myself at all, for the full three weeks.”

Good for Daniel, and good for us. Scripture informs and enriches most of the practices we engage in as a church, and I encourage you to look back for those bits of encouragement yourself.

Why Resolutions Don’t Stick

With a new year tomorrow, plenty of people are making commitments. Lose weight. Exercise more. Be fitter. Break an addiction. Improve your appearance, change your mood, be nicer — whatever it is. The world says go get them, make a resolution.

I am not condemning anyone here. But I will say that by and large those things are half-hearted — and if they stuck, we would not need the same cycle every single year. You would not need them.

Why does it repeat? Because there is no surrender in it. The system the person leans into is of the world’s design.

My position is that you should flee from that system. Not from making commitments — from relying on your own devices to accomplish them. The world will applaud you. A friend will stick with you for a while. Some social media post will encourage you onward, and through sheer white-knuckling you may even get it done.

But without surrender to God — the one who holds your molecules together, think about that — it cannot be done. Because your strength will fade. It will. It will. It will.

Two Problems I Ran Into

Surrender is an enormous topic. Search for it and you will find endless material — the twenty most powerful verses on surrender, blog posts, articles, videos. Billy Graham has a well-known sermon on it. John Piper has written on it. Paul Washer has excellent sermons about it.

So I sat down like a good student with my Bible software — and I encourage you to get some, whether the free version, Blue Letter Bible, or the NET Bible — went to the New Testament, typed in surrender, and hit enter.

Zero results. The word does not occur in the New Testament.

Different translations render the underlying Greek in different ways, but word-for-word, the term simply is not there. How can that be, when there is an ocean of material out there on it?

Because it is a concept. And that was my first problem — I do not like concepts.

That is a personal preference, not a prescription. I also do not much like thought-for-thought translations. Preference, not prescription. I like things black and white, because it is more comforting to me. I do not love being told to read something and grasp a greater truth God will give you. Of course God gives truth and understanding — He imparts wisdom, and He alone can do that, because if I stand on my own two feet my strength and my understanding will both fail. I simply find it easier when it is spelled out.

How God Corrected Me

I get stuck on things and turn them over in my head. And God rescued me out of that confusion — with context.

My friend Sam and I have been in a growth group together for years, and whenever I want to fire a verse at him he cuts me off: you need to read around the verse; you are not giving anyone the context. He is right, and he saves me from myself regularly.

Our main text is James 4:6–10, but look at what comes just before it.

Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously”? — James 4:4–5 (NKJV)

That last line stuck with me. “The Scripture says” is a standard New Testament way of introducing an Old Testament quotation. But the study note in my Bible points out that the quotation which follows is not found as such in the Old Testament. It is a composite of general Old Testament teaching. “The Spirit yearns jealously” does not appear there.

It had bothered me that I could not find surrender in my searching — and here God was correcting my thinking, making an appeal to what was conventionally understood. The audience at the time would have heard those words and nodded along. Yes. Yes, it says that.

How wrong I was. Concepts do occur in Scripture. Those hearers knew, through instruction and contemplation and the ordinary coming and going of their days, that the word of God as they had it proclaimed a truth — even when it was not stated in the tidy, static form I find comforting.

That was solved for me by God’s grace, and I am thankful. If you struggle with the same thing, pray for His help and understanding — because there are a great many truths that are not expressly stated, and this is one of them.

When Does an Army Surrender?

I like analogies, and Scripture is full of military ones — Old Testament and New. Armies, generals, soldiers, described in terms of obedience: what it is to be commanded, to be understood, to take direction. Perhaps I like it because I have been in the Guard for seventeen years. Perhaps I simply like order.

Hold on to what we just read: you are at enmity with God. And that phrase about the spirit yearning jealously points at your own heart — you yearn wrongly. Only through God’s grace do you want rightly.

So if I am at enmity with God, I am at odds with Him. I am His enemy, in conflict with His will.

Now — when do people surrender? When do armies surrender? If you watch combat sports, when does someone submit?

A fight can be won in total defeat without any submission at all; the victor is still the victor. So when does a general say enough?

Here is what I wrote down, and I hope it sticks with you: it is a logical, experienced, deduced position, based on the reality of what is occurring around them — or the realization of what will inevitably occur.

And what does James 4:4 say? You are at enmity with God. His enemy. It is only a matter of time — whether you refuse to submit, or whether it dawns on you mercifully, as I pray it does — that you will lose to Him every single time.

People nod along: yes, God is sovereign, God is in control. But do you live like that? Do you live in a way that acknowledges you are going to lose?

Some of you don’t. I don’t always. I love my own understanding far too much. I am prideful in what I do, arrogant, boastful. I get reminded that I have a big head and need to be rid of it. And I suspect you wrestle with the same.

I think a lot of men fantasize about saving people. Do you do that? I do — daydreaming about what I would do to save everyone in this room. And who is the victor in that daydream? Me. I promote myself even inside my own head. I am going to save everybody. I cannot even save myself.

So once you understand who God is and who you are, and realize you cannot win against Him — it is logical, it is experienced, it is rational to surrender to an almighty God who rules eternity past, eternity future, and the present, which is the only place we can really grasp it. He rules every second. Every fibre of this carpet. Every cell in my head. All of it is His.

To Line Up Under

But He gives more grace. Therefore He says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you… Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up. — James 4:6–10 (NKJV)

“Therefore submit to God.” The word submit literally means to line up under — which is exactly why the military analogy fits. It was used of soldiers under the authority of their commanders.

In the New Testament the same word describes Jesus’ submission to His parents’ authority in Luke 2, submission to human government in Romans 13, the church’s submission to Christ in Ephesians 5, and servants’ submission to their masters in Titus 2 and 1 Peter 2.

James uses it to describe a willing, conscious submission to God’s authority as sovereign ruler of the universe. A truly humble person gives his allegiance to God, obeys His commands, and follows His leadership.

There are plenty of modern views on personal surrender, borrowed from the world and all its vain philosophies, suggesting you can cooperate within some power structure, struggle alongside people, do it without harming yourself, and arrive at a pleasant, equitable outcome regarding who God is and who you are. That is a lie. Run from it.

Your need for surrender is a position you come to understand: understanding the need for it, understanding what it is, understanding who God is, accepting your limitations, and giving over to God your everything.

A Living Sacrifice

How do you live your life and say Jesus is Lord and actually mean it?

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. — Romans 12:1 (ESV)

A living sacrifice. Not just your heart — of course you give your heart to Jesus. Not just your head, assenting to a position. Your entirety. Your being. Your core. Every part of you down to your fingernails and your toes, offered up.

Picture a priest approaching an altar in the Old Testament — walking up with the offering in his hands. That thing might as well be a person. Think of yourself that way.

And in that offering God begins to pull at you. He picks at your heart and your mind and stretches the edges of your comfort — what you do, how you serve His children, His people, His kingdom. We do not offer a dead sacrifice, but one that takes action in the world for His sake.

It will stretch your capacity. It will make you uncomfortable. It will strain your confidence, and you will think: God, I cannot do the things you are asking of me.

But what was submission? To line up under. To obey. To subject yourself to His will. It will fall outside of you — it will, it will — but it is not beyond you, because it never had anything to do with you. It is how God works in you and through you, for His kingdom’s sake and His will to be done.

Thy Will Be Done

The first thing I thought of was the Lord’s Prayer. I was raised Lutheran, and the liturgy is lodged in my head. I still hear the creeds. My mother is right there, and she is wonderful, and she took me to church constantly — and I never thought I was paying attention, but those creeds are in there, and I am thankful for it.

The Lord’s Prayer breaks into petitions, and the third is thy will be done.

In his Large Catechism, Martin Luther writes on that third petition: if we are to abide in God’s will, we shall have to suffer many thrusts and blows from everything that seeks to oppose and prevent the fulfilment of the first two petitions. Hallowed be thy name — God is holy. Thy kingdom come — this is what we desire. And then thy will be done asks something of us.

So how do you surrender your will?

Pray. Pray to God every day that you would properly bear your cross for His sake — dying to yourself for Christ. That is a grievous thing to consider, because it means the death of yourself. Remember the living sacrifice? That is your body. And what happens to sacrifices? They die.

Proclaim in prayer. Seek to understand the love Christ has for you. Ask God to purge whatever misunderstanding is in you. And as you offer yourself up each day, understand your own inherent deceitfulness, disobedience, and destructiveness — and pray that God removes it.

There is genuine hope in the execution of it. Do not forget that, and mean it.

Because I Love You

I say this because I love you: follow the will of your Father. He commands you to submit, to obey, to surrender. There is no middle ground here, and no fence-sitting.

And to those who believe they are in right standing — if that is you, and something is gnawing at you, some doubt or misunderstanding — know that the best theologians who ever lived, the apostles themselves, doubted their position. Do not let doubt drive you into despair. Let it drive you into study and contemplation and prayer, begging God to root out whatever is separating you from Him.

Because this is the gospel: the Lord Jesus Christ came to earth, lived a sinless life, died in your place on the cross, and by His own power rose from the dead. He went as a sacrifice because He is God in the flesh, and He raised Himself so He could bring you to newness of life — born again, a new creation, living for His sake, His kingdom, His honour and His glory.

If this troubles you, or makes you think, or makes you doubt — come and talk to me. And pick someone to live this out alongside. If you struggle with surrendering your will, talk to someone about it. Ask me. Ask a friend.

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. — Luke 14:26–27 (ESV)

Loved ones, surrender to God. Do it now. And if you know someone who has not, implore them to do the same.