Surrender to His Ways (21 Days of Surrender #2)

I picked Psalm 25 for today many weeks ago, but only opened it up properly this past week. And as I worked through it, trying to answer the question how do we surrender to God’s ways?, I found four answers. I got excited — a tidy four-point sermon.

Then I realized it should not be a four-point sermon at all. It should be a four-part one, woven through our whole morning, with space to respond after each part.

Part One: Trust His Divine Ways

To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame; they shall be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous. — Psalm 25:1–3 (ESV)

If you get nothing else from today, you at least walk away with the phrase wantonly treacherous. Use it and sound clever.

In 1969 the Beatles released a single. Back then a single meant vinyl — an A-side and a B-side. Some bands put the same song on both. Many put the radio version on one side and an acoustic take or remix on the other. Occasionally a band had something recorded and unused and simply slapped it on the back.

The A-side was “Get Back.” But I suspect more of you know the B-side: “Don’t Let Me Down.” And if you know it, I have just put the chorus in your head, for which I apologize — it has been in mine for four days.

It was written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with Lennon on lead vocals, and it is largely about his relationship with Yoko Ono. Listen only to the verses and you hear things like nobody ever loved me like she does, and it’s a love that lasts forever. From the verses alone you would conclude this was one of the great marriages — built to weather anything.

Which is why the chorus stands out. All he does is repeat the title four times. Don’t let me down. Part of him knows she loves him and is for him — and there is still that sliver of fear. That bit of doubt.

That is exactly how these verses feel to me.

David opens: “To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” Lovely and poetic — but what does it mean? Hebrew poetry helps us, because the next line defines it: “O my God, in you I trust.” He is saying, like Lennon, I trust you. I know you are for me. You are God. You are good.

And then the sliver of doubt: let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me. Which is to say — I know you are good and powerful, but don’t let me down. The NET Bible renders it: “My God, I trust in you. Please do not let me be humiliated.”

If you have followed Jesus for any length of time, I suspect you understand David. Part of you genuinely trusts. You know God is real and good. And there is a sliver of doubt — moments you wonder whether He will answer this prayer, whether He hears you or is ignoring you, whether He will fail you.

Then watch what he does in verse 3. He begins with “Indeed.” A declaration. Definitive. Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame.

Suddenly there is confidence. He is admitting: I have feelings, but my feelings are so fickle and shifting that they make a terrible foundation. I want the rock-solid foundation of God and His ways instead. Even with the part of him that fears God might not come through, he knows the truth.

We live in a world that tells us to follow our feelings. I am not saying ignore them — God made you with emotion. But emotions are a lousy foundation, because they never stop moving. Last week you were fine. This week you are low. Next week, who knows. God’s ways never change.

How did David manage it? Isaiah 55 says: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” Those words were written some three centuries after this psalm, but David already grasped the truth of them — God is God, and he is not.

David had been let down by people who swore they were with him and then weren’t. You can hardly blame him for transferring some of that onto God. But he recognizes: you are not like us. You are actually reliable. So even though I fear and doubt and wonder — I will declare. I will trust. I will follow.

Part Two: Confess Your Sinful Ways

Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for the sake of your goodness, O Lord! — Psalm 25:6–7 (ESV)

Surrendering to God’s ways means confessing when our ways are not aligned with His.

At first I read “the sins of my youth” as David downplaying things — those foolish old sins from back then. But notice he adds “or my transgressions.” He means his sins now. This is not I was foolish once, but I am wise these days. In fact, in verse 11 he says, “For your name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my guilt, for it is great.”

He is admitting his sin is awful. Enormous. And if you know David’s story, you know it was — adultery, murder, deceit. About as bad as it gets. He is not minimizing anything.

But as vast as his sin is, he knows the grace of God is greater. He has not managed to out-sin the steadfast love of the Father.

1 John 1:8–9 says that if we claim to have no sin we deceive ourselves — but if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Do you believe that? Do you believe God can forgive your sin? I have known people convinced theirs was so atrocious that a holy, just God never would. And yet David’s was as bad as it gets, and he throws himself on that grace.

For some of you the question is different. You believe He can. Your struggle is whether He would want to — because you are embarrassed by it, ashamed of it, and you have let it become part of your identity. Yes, He could. I just don’t think He’d want to.

He does. It is the entire reason Jesus came. He wants to forgive you. He does not want you shackled to your sinful ways — He wants you free of them, with life and life abundantly.

If you believe that, then confess. Acknowledge it. Put it out there, like David. I admit my sin. I admit I fall short. I lay it before you.

We took time to do exactly that, area by area. Confess generally — or, if the Holy Spirit brings something specific to mind, confess that, and lay it at the foot of the cross knowing it was already taken for you.

Your relationships. Have you sinned against someone recently?

Your wallet. Have you used your finances for things that do not glorify God?

Your body. Have you used it in ways that did not honour God — in violence, sexually, or simply in failing to care for the body He gave you?

Your mouth. Have you used words that hurt or harmed — or withheld words that would have helped and healed?

Your mind. Have you been harbouring a lack of trust in God, a lack of faith? Anger? Bitterness?

Now realize this: everything you just confessed has been forgiven through the cross. You have done the first half of 1 John 1:9 — you confessed. God is able and just to forgive and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

And any time you find yourself reaching back for those past sins and letting them become your identity again, bring them back to God and lay them down again. Because they are forgiven. As Romans 8:1 says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Walk in that freedom.

Part Three: Learn His Reliable Ways

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. — Psalm 25:4–5 (ESV)

Imagine you are out hiking and your phone dies. No signal, no GPS, and you brought no paper map. Before long you realize you are thoroughly lost. You stop, look around, try to work out which way is north, try to remember where you parked — and you have no idea.

As the panic rises (and the praying starts), you hear something. Another hiker is coming up the path. Relief.

“Afternoon — this is a bit embarrassing, but I’m lost. Which way is the trailhead?”

How do you want them to answer? Would you like: “Oh, I think it’s sort of that way. Just head in that general direction. I’m sure you’ll be fine. Have a good hike”?

Or: “Yes — I know exactly where you need to go. You missed a turn back there; there are fallen oaks across the trail, which is why you walked past it. Go about half a mile, turn at the oaks, and in two or three miles you’re back at the trailhead”?

Obviously the second, because it is reliable.

A great many people in our culture mean extremely well and give directions like the first hiker. Just do what feels right. You do you. Head in that general direction — it’s working for me and seems to work for everyone else.

David wants none of that. He does not merely ask God to tell him where the path is, or even to show him. He says: make me to know your ways. Remember that hint of doubt back in verses 1–3? Because of it he is saying, God, I don’t trust myself. Make me know your ways. Make me walk your paths. I need your help. Teach me.

So take David’s tip and simply ask. Pray it.

And recognize that God has already given you instructions on where His paths lie. It is called the Bible. I know it is intimidating — a thick book full of stories and genealogies. But the more you read and study and grow familiar with it, the more its truths embed themselves, the more you begin to think along those lines, and the more He slowly replaces your desires with His. So read it, study it, listen to it — even a portion a day.

And if you are like me, you will hit lazy seasons where you simply do not. So bring someone with you. It is far easier to hike with company than alone. Get into a growth group, or find one person to study and pray with, so you can spur one another on toward love and good deeds, as Hebrews puts it. Do not hike alone.

This is exactly why we begin each year with 21 days of prayer. It was originally meant as a one-off, and we realized we ought to do it again. It creates space for you to ask and plead: God, help me be who you call me to be. I want to walk in your ways.

Notice too that each devotional leads with a passage of Scripture. That is deliberate — read the Scripture before the writer’s words, and let God’s word teach you first. And we do it together as a reminder that you are not hiking alone; an entire church family is walking it with you.

If you missed the first week — you were away, or busy, or slipped straight back into old patterns — start today. Grab a booklet on your way out or sign up for the email, and commit to getting into Scripture and asking God to make you walk His paths.

We prayed this together, woven from Colossians 1:15–17, Psalm 25:4–5, and Psalm 139:23–24:

You, O Jesus, are the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. By you all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… You are before all things, and in you all things hold together — because you are the sovereign Lord. Make me to know your ways; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long. Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts. See if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.

Part Four: Humbly Declare His Faithful Ways

Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way. He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way. All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies. — Psalm 25:8–10 (ESV)

When I was younger I disliked repeating anything. I rarely read a book twice or rewatched a film. I wanted new. New was exciting; repetition was old, and old was stale.

That shaped how I handled Scripture. I grew up in a Christian home and had read most of the Bible, so in my twenties, when I read books meant to help me grow, I would hit a quoted passage and either skim it to catch which text it was or skip it entirely. I’ve read the Bible. I haven’t read this author. So I chased the author’s words — which would fade — and skimmed past the eternal words of God.

I got humbled out of that in my mid-to-late twenties, in an accountability group with two other men. We had heard of committing to large amounts of Scripture, so we agreed to read twenty-five to thirty chapters a week — four, five, six chapters a day. And if any one of us failed to finish, all three of us repeated it the following week.

Then we had the harebrained idea of reading Philippians. Philippians is four chapters. Which meant reading the whole letter every day.

By day four I was bored out of my mind. You are getting an unflattering glimpse of your pastor here — you are supposed to love the Scriptures — and I could not wait to meet up so we could pick something else.

Then we met. One man said he had only managed it two or three times, so we would repeat it. The other said he had not done it at all. Outwardly I said all the right things — this will be good for us. Inwardly: this is awful, I have this thing memorized.

I do not remember whether it was day fifteen or sixteen or seventeen. It does not matter. I was reading and suddenly stopped — wait, where has that been? I had read it fifteen times in a row and did not remember it at all. Had I picked up a different translation?

The next day, the same thing. And the next, something new again.

I was deeply humbled to discover how arrogant I had been — assuming that because I had read something once, I knew it. It was the repetition that let me see the power and beauty I had been walking past.

When David reaches verses 8, 9 and 10, he is largely repeating what he has already said. Young me would have skimmed to get to something new — and missed the point entirely. Sometimes we need to hear a thing over and over. Some of you are brilliant and remember everything first time. The rest of us are fickle. We forget. We need it pounded into our hearts.

When you read Scripture, one of the first things to do is simply observe — and especially look for patterns and repetitions. David gives us one in verse 9: he uses the word humble twice.

Your translation may only have it once; that will be a thought-for-thought rendering, which reads more smoothly. The ESV leans word-for-word, which sometimes produces clunkier English — but the word is there twice in the Hebrew. And if David says it twice, he wants us to get it.

Because if you are going to surrender to God’s ways, humility is not optional. To be teachable, to be instructed, to be led — you have to be humble. I was not humble about Scripture in my teens and twenties. I thought reading it once meant I had it. I had to be humbled before I could see more.

Humility will let you return to the same thing again and again, because you will believe God has something there for you — either something you need to hear again, or something you need to hear in a new way.

But notice the kind of humility. This is not well, I think God is good and upright, but you may see it differently and we’ll agree to disagree. He says it definitively: good and upright is the Lord. There is humility in him — but it is humility before God, recognizing that God is God and he is not, which frees him to declare confidently what he knows to be true.

And reading these last verses, I don’t think he only wants to humbly declare God’s faithful ways. I think he wants to humbly live them.

That is what I want for you — because that is where your greatest joy will be found and where you will make the biggest difference to the people around you. But it requires surrendering to His ways.

So this week, plead with God to teach you His ways — because as He teaches you, your trust grows, and you find yourself able to trust His divine ways. And when you catch yourself and realize that was my way, not God’s, take the moment and confess it, remembering that He is faithful and just to forgive you. Then go back to Him and keep humbly seeking, declaring His goodness, and living for Him.