Surrendering all to God doesn’t mean giving up the external things of our lives; it means surrendering our will to him. When this is done, all is done. There are very few crises in life; the great crisis is the surrender of the will. God never crushes a will to the point of surrender; he never begs or pleads. He simply waits until we freely yield our will to him. This battle, once waged, never needs to be refought.
Surrender for deliverance. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Only after we have begun to experience what salvation means do we surrender our wills to Jesus and allow him to give us rest. Perplexity in heart or mind is a call to our will to come to Jesus. Our coming is voluntary, never forced.
Surrender for devotion. “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves” (Matthew 16:24). The surrender here is of my self to Jesus, my self resting with him. He’s saying, “Give up your right to yourself to me.” If I do, the rest of my life will be nothing but the manifestation of this surrender. I’ll never need to wonder about my purpose again, nor will I care about my circumstances. I’ll know that Jesus is sufficient for all.
Surrender for death. “When you are old . . . someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). Have you learned what it means to be bound for death? Beware of a surrender you make to God in a moment of ecstasy; you are likely to take it back again. Surrender is a question of being united with Jesus in his death, so that nothing appeals to you that didn’t appeal to him. The entirety of life after surrender is a longing and a striving for unbroken communion with God.
