“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit (surrender) to the Father of our spirits and live!!” Hebrews 12:7-9
Surrender is sacrifice. Surrender is rejecting OUR will and doing God’s will because we want to express our love to God. Surrender is faith.
Elizabeth Elliot, wife of the missionary Jim Elliot, gives us this statement about our will and surrender:
“When the will of man acts in accord with the will of God, that’s faith. When the will of man acts in opposition to the will of God that is unbelief.”
So surrendering our will to God’s will is an act of faith.
The term “surrender” is defined as a verb: to yield to the power of another: give up under compulsion or to relinquish.
What do the words “yield” and “compulsion” tell us? To give way, relinquishing our own desires and seeking to obey God’s desires for us. When pondering the word “compulsion” we know it is an irresistible and persistent impulse to act in a certain way.
What do we need to know about surrender? When we consider “yielding” to God, we encounter our own stubborn will. Giving in to God and turning away from our selfish desires is only accomplished by the work of the Holy Spirit and it is motivated by our love for God. In other words, the “why” of our surrender is our deep compulsion to love God more. We pursue a deeper understanding of who He is, what He has done for us, and what He asks of us, and then as we discover the answers to all these parts of faith, our desire to please Him increases and our love for Him grows.
Time is one thing we all get equal portions of. We all get twenty-four hours a day to accomplish what God wants us to accomplish.
It is important to recognize this gift as a gift. We cannot think of time as something to “kill”. It is precious. We are rich in time, always given a new day to begin again, and consulting God at the beginning of each day is surely the first step in honoring God with our time.
It often means laying aside what might be “our agenda” and following God’s leading to use our time “for Him” in the most constructive way possible. God will bless us as we relinquish time to Him. Start today! Pray the moment you open your eyes that He will guide you through the minutes of the day to do for Him exactly what He wants you to do. Proceed with joy and the assurance that if you ask Him for guidance, He will surely give it! Prayer, and an on-going awareness of the Holy Spirit in the hours of your day will change how you “spend” your time.
Excerpts from Learning to Live with Eternity’s Values in View Curriculum