If Surrender Scares You
If surrender scares you, this post is for you. One of the biggest reasons why people keep from truly following Christ and surrendering to God is the belief that then life would be boring or, at least, all the fun would be cancelled. People just are not ready to bury their dreams. It might seem that is what God wants us to do. But when you dig a bit deeper you find out that God wants to give us life and more life. God wants us to bring our dreams into his service. That doesn’t sound that scary, does it?
God calls us to surrender
It is true that Jesus calls his disciples to 1) deny him/herself , 2) take up his/her cross, and 3) follow him (Matthew 16:24) and that scares us to death, doesn’t it? Those are exactly the three things we do not want to do.
We don’t want to deny ourselves, we want to express ourselves in every way possible.
We don’t want to take up any crosses, we want to be pampered.
We don’t want to follow anyone, we want to be followed.
God empowers us to surrender
What to do then? It is God, after all, who wants us to surrender to him. We want to, but we are not able. Is all our hope gone? On the contrary. Exactly at the moment when we realise that we can not do on our own what God requires of us, our life is just about getting better. This is the moment when our life really begins. And this is the place where our life beings: at the foot of the cross. It’s true: We can’t. But God can. Come, Lord Jesus: empower us.
What does it mean?
Let’s look at this verse again. Could it be a bit less scary? Here’s how the Amplified Bible puts it:
Then Jesus said to His disciples, If anyone desires to be My disciple, let him deny himself [disregard, lose sight of, and forget himself and his own interests] (Matthew 16:24, AMP)…
Denying oneself means that we don’t focus on ourselves but on God. We don’t use our gifts for selfish reasons but to glorify God. It does not mean that suddenly we’d be without character, dreams, and passions. Only our ego needs to die. The rest God has created so you can serve him as planned. Hence there is no reason to be scared of surrendering to God.
…and take up his cross and follow Me [cleave steadfastly to Me, conform wholly to My example in living and, if need be, in dying, also]. (Matthew 16:24, AMP)
Surrendering egos
Instead of cleaving to ourselves and our big egos, we need to cling to Jesus.
Instead of obeying our own desires, we need to obey God.
Instead of boosting our egos, we need to be boasting about the cross.
Life does not become boring when we follow Christ. Actually, quite the contrary. If we dare to follow Christ wherever he leads us, our life will be adventurous. God has great plans for each of us.
Life does not become fun-less when we surrender to God. Quite the opposite. If we dare to embrace Christ no matter what happens to us, our joy will be increasing. Holy joy will follow us.
Bringing dreams to God
We are not to bury our dreams, either. Instead, we are to bring them to Christ. He will do something beautiful with them. Not to boost our ego, but to bring glory to God.
Following Christ and surrendering to God is less scary than we might have initially thought. It is all God’s grace. Sure, we can’t follow Christ without being empowered by God’s grace. But God can empower us anytime, anywhere. And that’s our hope, our faith, and our joy.
Let us pray:
Gracious God,
We come to you with our dreams, our worries, our everything.
We want to be truly, fully yours.
Help us to surrender to you.
Empower us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses,
and following Christ wherever you lead us.
Be our hope. Be our joy. Be our everything.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Q4U: What is the hardest thing for you to surrender to God?
Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you keep on surrendering both new and old things to God!
* [As you might have noticed, I enjoy reading the Bible in different translations and love comparing them. I have started linking the Bible verses toBiblegateway.com so you can easily read (and compare) them in the different versions I’ve used while preparing each post.].
Image courtesy of Mari-Anna Stålnacke. This post is refurbished from 2012. Linking up today with Dance with Jesus, Faith-filled Fridays, Five Minute Friday.
4 thoughts on “If Surrender Scares You”
Visiting from FMF. I need to go help my kids with something but I will re-read this closer soon. Did you write this in 5 minutes? Wow! Jenn
HA! I did not write this in 5 minutes. I got so inspired that I just had to keep going. Sorry! Thanks for visiting and commenting, Jenn! Blessings to you and yours!
Usually, when that happens to me, I type stop at the end of five minutes and then type below “continuing on”. It’s not happened in a while. My brain is pretty distracted most of the time. I need to clear my mind!
Visiting you from FMF.
@flowingfaith:disqus: I love how you expressed surrender. I agree with you. Thank you.
You can find me here:
https://awifesreflections.wordpress.com/2016/11/26/five-minute-friday-surrender