Surrendering To GodSurrendering To God

Have You Taken The Second Have You Taken The Second Step?Step?

What is Surrendering?

Use As A Verb

sur·ren·der

• səˈrendər/

• verb

• verb: surrender; 3rd person present: surrenders; past tense: surrendered; past participle: surrendered; gerund or present participle: surrendering

• 1.

• cease resistance to an enemy or opponent and submit to their authority.

• "over 140 rebels surrendered to the authorities"

• synonyms: capitulate, give in, give (oneself) up, give way, yield, concede (defeat), submit, climb down, back down, cave in, relent, crumble;

Use as A Nooun

• noun

• noun: surrender; plural noun: surrenders

• 1.

• the action of surrendering.

• synonyms:capitulation, submission, yielding, succumbing, acquiescence;

How Do We Think About Surrendering?

• Most times when we think about surrendering we think about it in terms of a fight. We equate it to struggling with doing what we want to do rather than us doing what God would have us to do. Most of us believe that the act of giving your life to Christ is equal to surrendering your life to Christ. We are wrong when we believe this.

Perspective 1God Gives us Free Will

• God may be God and he may be almighty, but he doesn’t really know what it is I want so I need to show God how my life should be lived. You have determined you will live your life the way you want to and God will bend his will to accommodate you. God has given you free will to make the choices you do and consequences may or may not follow.

Perspective 2God Knows My Heart

• God knows I am good person and he knows I am going to fail because God knows man cannot be perfect and therefore he will forgive for my sins and I can start over. He has already forgiven me for the sins of my past and the sins of my future so if I don’t honor his will all the time he understands. God has my back.

Perspective 3I Can Totally Give Myself to

Christ at Heaven’s Door and Roll On Into Heaven

• My personal favorite. Live life with no respect to anyone but yourself even though you know its outside of God’s will. I am going to get mine’s now.

Turn it Up!

Remember You Are Storing Treasures in Heaven

• Matthew 6:19-21• King James Version (KJV)• 19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,

where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

• 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

• 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Key to God’s Treasure Chest

In order to store up treasures you have to submit to the will of God. You must

surrender

Jesus Died on the Cross

• Jesus Christ, died on a Roman cross as recorded in Matthew 27:27-56, Mark 15:21-38, Luke 23:26-49, and John 19:16-37. Christian theology teaches that Christ's death provided the perfect atoning sacrifice for the sins all mankind, thus making the crucifix, or cross, one of the defining symbols of Christianity.

Scriptures on Why Jesus Died?• Isaiah 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned

to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him [Jesus] the iniquity of us all.

• John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

• Romans 3:25 God presented Him [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood.

• Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

• 1 Corinthians 15:3 …Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.

• 2 Corinthians 5:21 God made Him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

• Hebrews 2:17 For this reason He [Jesus] had to be made like His brothers in every way, in order that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people.

• Hebrews 9:28 Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for Him.

• 1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by His wounds you have been healed.

• 1 John 2:1-2 My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

• 1 John 4:10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Surrendering is The Second Step

• Jesus chose to be crucified. The death of Jesus was an act of surrendering because he submitted to the will of God. He had the power to stop the crucifixion but he did not.

• Jesus said: "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30). Jesus chose not to save Himself.  He went to His crucifixion willingly to be killed like a lamb going to slaughter. He did this because, as we learn in John 3:16 He loved us: "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever believes on Him would not perish but have eternal life." 

Have You Taken The Second Step?

Surrendering Requires Submission

• When we commit our lives to Christ we simply recognize the fact that Jesus Christ died upon the cross for our sins. We aren’t taking an affirmative step but we are showing our reverence for the power of Christ.

• Proverbs 3:5-6 - Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight (or: will direct your paths)

Surrendering is Spiritual

Surrendering is a spiritual act but we confuse it with the natural and physical act of

fighting in the flesh.

Why Should You Surrender? We Cannot Help Ourselves. We, on our own, are

not smart enough, nor are we strong enough, to get ourselves out of the situations in which we find ourselves. These situations can be anything that is keeping us from being all that God desires us to be: Drugs, sex, alcohol, money, movies, whatever. When you are moving from a place where you either shouldn't be or don't want to be to a place where you either ought to be or want to be, God must be in control.

It is impossible for any of us on our own to overcome sin. We cannot get ourselves out of a problem that plagues all

mankind. We need to submit to God because we cannot solve our own problems.

• Isaiah 53:4-6 - Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

 

God Fills our Emptiness.

Submission will get us where we need to go. We were created to have communion with our Creator. When our first parents rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden the intimacy of that communion was lost. Mankind as a whole got lost and wandered away from God. Whether we know it or not the one thing that all people lack is that communion with our Creator, it is the one thing we all are looking for but many of us are so blind to it that we replace it with smaller things. Things like: Wealth, power, sex, fame, society, knowledge, liquor, drugs, and so on. These are created things and as such they can never fill the great emptiness inside of us. Instead we are left noticing that emptiness even more and we go down in a vicious spiral of dependency and desperation. The vast emptiness within us can be filled by God alone. The one place to which we all aspire, whether we know it or not, is the throne of God and it is only through submission to Him that we will be able to reach that destination.

 

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God Can Deliver Anyone

• Psalm 34:3-7 - Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together. I sought the LORD, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called, and the LORD heard him; he saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.

Let God Fight Your Battles

• Isaiah 54:17 No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, saith the LORD.

Surrender Control

If your sinful nature controls your mind, there is death. But if the Holy Spirit controls your mind,

there is life and peace. – Romans 8:6

God Doesn’t Negotiate

(God) cannot bless us unless he has us. When we try to keep

within us an area that is our own, we try to keep an area of death. Therefore, in love, He claims all. There's no bargaining with Him.

C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”

Only God Can Free You From Sin’s Control

…there is another law at work within me that is at war with my mind. This law wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin. – Romans 7:23-25

God Removes Guilt

Keep me from deliberate sins! Don't let them control me. Then I will be free of guilt and innocent

of great sin. – Psalms 19:13

How To We Submit?

1. Trust God

2. Permit God To Guide Us

3. Yield to God’s Control

Trust God We must realize that God can be trusted. God is completely trustworthy and always has

only our best interests at heart. We have nothing to fear from God. He may be infinitely greater that us in every way but it is because of that difference that we can trust Him. He is not petty. He is not given to mood swings. He is not out for Himself. We can trust that in all ways He seeks our good so that we can become what He has designed us to be. In the letter to the Roman Christians we find these words:

 

Romans 5:6-10 - You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!

 

If God was willing to do this great thing of salvation while we were still His enemies how much more will He do for us now that we are His children. If God could be trusted to love us when we hated Him, how much more can He be trusted to love us now that we love Him.

 

Permit God to Guide Us• We must permit God to be our guide. It is all well and good to say that the

roadmap you have in your hand is trustworthy, that it tells the truth, that it has been prepared by the best mapmaker on earth. No matter how trustworthy the map is it will never help me reach my destination if I do not look at it and follow its direction. Sometimes we can get lost even with a roadmap if we fail to look at it. Some people have even gotten lost with a GPS because they didn’t trust the directions. We often treat God the way we treat roadmaps and GPS. We may believe that He is the best of all possible Gods and is always completely trustworthy. We may even believe that God is real and is completely honest and loving in all His dealings with humanity. Yet if we never allow Him to be our guide this knowledge is worse than useless, doing us absolutely no good while causing us unbelievable harm. We need to be able to stop directing our own lives and allow God to do the directing for us.

•  

Let God Drive!

• Proverbs 16:1-3 - To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the reply of the tongue. All a man's ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD. Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.

•  

• If you are being driven somewhere by someone the only way you will get there is to let them drive. God has a goal for us that can only be found by letting Him lead us to it.

Yield To God’s Control

• Yield.  We must yield to God's control. Isaiah, a prophet of the Old Testament, was given these words of comfort by God to speak to the people of Israel in spite of their turning their backs on God and the punishment that hung above them because of this:

•  

• Isaiah 30:19-21 - O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

You Cannot Make It Own Your Own!

• Many of us go through our lives as though we are free agents. We carry the concept of a loving God around with us in our back pocket as a comforting presence but in reality we have bought into our society's lie that we can make it on our own. God is not a back pocket God. He is not a convenient power that we can pull out when we mess up and need Daddy to fix it. He asks us to trust Him and let Him be our guide

•  

• Psalms 32:8 - I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.

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Ask God For Help?

• God will only be our guide if we allow Him to, if we say to Him: "God, I'm not capable of doing this on my own, please help me go the right way." Each of us needs to realize, to believe, that we cannot get ourselves out of the messes that we get ourselves into. Only God is able to do this.

• We cannot remove ourselves from the power of whatever is controlling our lives but God can. On our own we are trapped but if we allow God to have His way with us then instead of walking along to our deaths we can look forward to life both now and for eternity. Words about submission will not make you submit. You can be told why submission is necessary, but you have to make the decision to submit to God. You must be willing to allow God to guide you.

Test Yourself Proverbs 3:5-6 - Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not

on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight (or: will direct your paths)

  This is perhaps the best test of whether or not we are submitting to God: Are we acknowledging Him in all our ways? Is there any part of our life where God is not allowed, any area where we are unwilling to experience communion with God? Through Jesus' life, death, and resurrection our broken communion with God has been restored. Once we are able to have fellowship with God and enjoy it we will no longer will treat God as a map lying closed on the seat beside us but He will become our guide, active in every aspect of our lives.

SURRENDER

Take the Next Step