I tell you the truth: surrender isn't easy
Surrender isn’t easy, but it sure is beautiful. Choosing to surrender to God is the best decision to make for the most faint and bravest of hearts. I don’t know where on that spectrum I land, but I can attest that surrender isn’t easy.
I’m sure you’ve heard Christians talking about their words on social media or even in fellowship with one another. These words are received in the spirit from the Spirit to reveal the posture, experience, or promise for the year. Sometimes it’s a combination of these or all three. Though I am no Christian by any religious standard — I’m Kingdom, and I’ll share more on this later — this is something God has been doing in my life since 2015. I’ve had a word for just about every year since:
2015 = go
2016 = go
2017 = accept the help
2018 = faith
2019 = furnace
2020 = grow
2021 = freedom
Last year, God revealed to me that He also gives anchor words — words that anchor our pursuit, purpose, promises, passions, and postures. Freedom was mine, and He had me draw a mind map of the words that sprang from it. As the year went on, I learned this map was a roadmap that travelled both inward and outward. You can imagine that I had a certain idea of how each of these words would be realized throughout the year. It’s safe to say that God’s plans superseded mine and for the better. He exceeded my expectations and imaginations above what I could have asked for.
Now, you may be asking what any of this has to do with the first two sentences of this entry. Well, surrender is my anchor word this year. No roadmap this time, but a what looks like a root system. And since the beginning of this year, I’ve learned that surrender is hard but it’s also satisfying.
I made a covenant promise to God and it’s one I don’t intend or plan to break: “I surrender — I give you my heart and my life in exchange for change.”
Thus far, I’ve chosen to surrender a few things. My desires for intimacy, my desire for marriage, my perception of my sexual nature, my health care, my body, my diet, my skincare, my haircare, my consumption, my time, my purposes, my talents, my skills, my gifts, my visions, my dreams, my mind, my heart, my faith, my life, my choices, my ideas, my imaginations, my expectations. Anything that I could consider “mine” is what I’ve given up. Not given up on, which is completely different, but given them up to the One who made me and has called me to live a life surrendered to Him and His will. While I know my pursuit of keeping my promise has already faced tests and found failure, I’ve benefited all the more from it.
“I give you my heart and my life in exchange for change.”
That sounds so simple and easy to do. Let me be the first to tell you it isn’t. It’s easy to make a commitment with our mouths and desire to keep it in our hearts, and I was certainly confident in my own ability to do this. I’d already spent last winter giving up and surrendering a lot already. It was in tears this I professed this covenant that cannot be broken. What I didn’t expect is the extent of the cost of this change, which is and has been everything. My everything.
Last year, much of the freedom I experienced had me deep diving into the depths of God’s healing and redeeming love. On August 1, 2021 I woke up free of the mental bondage I was held in for most of my life. I learned so much about the pain that was in my heart and the voices that were in my head. I learned the reasons for all of my vain pursuits and the deepest desires and longings of my soul. I learned that the essence of who I am yearned for something more. I need deep intimacy and a deep knowing that I can’t get from anywhere but God.
The more I’ve gone into this year, the more I realize and accept that there is nothing that satisfies and fills me more than God. That deepest empty place, that vacuum, can only be satiated by the unconditional love of the Father, ABBA God. It’s only been fourteen days in, and this is where I find myself in my walk in surrender — a spiritual crossroads.
Yesterday morning, I woke up experiencing condemnation. I found myself in the struggle Paul writes about in Romans 7:9-25 — the struggle of doing what you don’t necessarily want and not doing what you do want to do. As I struggled against condemnation, the Holy Spirit kept reminding me of this section of scripture but as I kept repeating what I could remember I just felt more shame. Then, I was instructed to grab my Bible and read. Tears streamed down my face as I read, and then I remembered the last sentence. It was the last sentence that reminded me of my hope. Jesus Christ, YHWH, the Son of God and Living King.
That has, in a way, been what my mornings have looked like lately. Though many of my mornings didn’t start in struggle, they all followed the same pattern: transformation from the renewing of my mind in order to apply scripture and offer myself as a living sacrifice. This is an actualization of our true and proper worship noted in Romans 12:1-2, and I was blessed to bear witness to that process within myself. And in my surrender each morning, I’ve been blessed beyond measure with peace to know that the Lord is my hope because His Word is true and sustained in His immutable faithfulness and goodness.* Soon after I was reminded of my hope, I was reminded of what I said earlier on — there is nothing in this world that can satisfy and fill me more than God. As I soberly returned to this revelation, I started to realize how true it is.
In my life, I’ve experienced a number of things that the world tells us we can be satisfied in. Relationships and love, great sex, having money, having some measure of success, pursuing and doing the work I love… up to this point in my life I’ve experienced a measure of each of these things for myself. None of it was to glorify God in my life, but to pursue this idea that it would bring me joy. The high and elation only came for a moment before it went. The self-glorifying benefits of these things were fleeting.
I sighed deeply as I sat on my bed considering this. “If I received everything I asked God for right now, do I truly believe I’d be fulfilled?” I absolutely believe I wouldn’t be. I’ve daydreamed enough about my ideal life and future to know that without God and without glorifying Him, it would still feel empty to me.
Why is that? Because I don’t want to gain the world, my world, and lose my soul in the process because I lost sight of the goodness of God’s heart by focusing more on His hand. Not knowing who God is makes even His good gifts feel like worthless treasures to me. I can say this because I know it’s true from my experience. And that is my surrender this year.
This morning, I woke up thinking about that moment yesterday. Wondering what God is showing me because that specific temptation is one I’m familiar with. I’ll be vulnerable and share that whenever I decide to surrender myself completely to the will of God — which is good, pleasing, and perfect* — temptation to get distracted always comes along. Whether in the form of a man or work or opportunities or whatever, it always comes around. I realised my faith is being tested, so I wanted to know what lesson I wasn’t learning before that I need to learn now. After reading and earnestly pleading and waiting, I learned what the lesson is.
Why do I do what I do? Why do I want what I want? What is my motivation? What is my purpose for it all? God was asking me to evaluate myself, my actions, my desires, all of it. A new kind of surrender. Not just in giving things up to Him, though that is something He asks us to do. This type of surrender is and feels different — I’m being asked to check my motivations and give Him anything that isn’t motivated by my singular purpose and desire in this life: to glorify Him by sharing His love. That was my 2020 declaration, and I meant it now just as much as I did then.
This is laying my idols down. This is my true surrender — giving up to Him any and everything that doesn’t have roots in God, His love, and glorifying His name. Where He is not the root, the fruit will never be abundant, sweet, and satisfying. A bitter root makes bitter fruit, a rotten root makes rotten fruit, but a good root makes good fruit. If my why isn’t to glorify Him and pull down His Kingdom, I need to uproot the tree, lay it down, and give it to Him. Then, I get to let God decide if it remains or gets removed — this is the testing and proving of His good, pleasing, and perfect will.
Being brave enough to declare surrender with our mouths starts the journey, and now the courage to follow God’s instruction keeps us there. This is mine. Surrender my everything, all of it, and trust Him with it as He is my hope — the one in whom my expectation lies and is from. I know the word, but do I trust Him to keep it?
“I give you my heart and my life in exchange for change. I just want change. I don’t want what I think will satisfy me, I just want what you want for me. Your visions, your plans, your dreams. I want more of you. I want to be like you. I want to please you. I want to glorify you. I surrender all of me in exchange for you. I just want change.”
And this is a fulfillment of God’s promise to me: “What is it that you want. Ask anything, and I will give it to you.” I asked, and He’s been answering every day since. As I’m being changed, I know that my life is changing at the same pace. Inside-out, outside-in, from root to fruit, and from fruit to root.
Like I said, surrender isn’t easy. It’s hard, and it’s beautiful… and there’s truly no other place I’d rather be and no other posture I’d rather have as I continue to walk this walk of faith in Christ. Completely yielded, as He was, to the good, pleasing, and perfect will of ABBA, Father God.
** read Psalm 62:5-8, Romans 12:1-8
