God Wants Us to Surrender Completely

The fundamental attitude of the servant of God, the mature believer well grounded in the truths of Scripture, must be that we live wholly for God. We live to serve Him, to advance the interests of His Kingdom. We do not live for ourselves; we belong entirely to God, and He has the right to do with us whatever He wants.

I want to plant this idea firmly, very firmly, in your heart: our life must be one of total surrender to the Lord, total submission, total humility, with the understanding that God has the right to do whatever He wants in my life, whether it is something good or something not so pleasant.

And I want to take a couple of Scriptures to illustrate this idea before turning to the other matters, to show how the Bible reinforces the idea that we are servants, that we are slaves of the Lord. When Paul wrote his epistles, he always began by saying: Paul, servant of the Lord—in other words, Paul, slave of Jesus Christ. The Greek word doulos that he used meant a slave, and when we translate it into Spanish using the word servant, I fear that word loses all the force Paul wanted to express. The idea was that Paul was entirely at his Lord’s disposal. Paul’s point was that he did not live for himself; rather, his life was wholly surrendered to the will of the heavenly Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ, who had shown him so much mercy.

This idea is recorded, for example, in Galatians, chapter 2, verse 20, where Paul says: “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Notice here that Paul considers himself so surrendered to the Lord and to His will that he regards himself as dead. He says: It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In other words, it is as though Paul were saying: My personality, my will, my dreams about life, my aspirations—everything has lost all importance beside the fact that the Lord is the one expressing Himself through me. Whatever God wants of my body, my mind, my voice, that is what I will do.

And Paul adds: And the life I now live in the flesh—that is, my whole life as a man, everything I do, everything I am, everything I express—I live in the Person of Christ Jesus. That is, it is as though what I want to say and do no longer matters; everything is simply the reflection and projection of Christ’s personality in me. Why? Because the Lord gave Himself. He says: “The One who gave Himself for me, the Son of God who gave Himself for me.”

Do you see the idea here that, since God has already given everything, since Christ has already made such a great sacrifice on the cross for our lives, what can we give the Lord? Anything we give God will be utterly insignificant. And that is why Christ says: When you have done everything you have been asked to do, know that, in the end, it is nothing. And that was the Lord’s point, wasn’t it? To kill and strike down that tendency toward pride in all of us, that tendency to think we are more than we really are.

The apostle James, in chapter 4 of his epistle, takes up this idea too, in a different way, calling us to consider ourselves entirely at God’s disposal. In James 4, verse 13, James says: “Come now, you who say, Today or tomorrow we will go to such-and-such a city and spend a year there, and trade and make a profit, when you do not know what tomorrow will bring. For what is your life? It is certainly a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say: If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”

Do you hear James’s exasperation? The apostle James seems upset with those people, including Christians—for he is writing to Christians—who live as though they were in control of their lives. They decide where they will move, what job they will choose, whom they will marry, which church they will attend, how they will spend their time and use their money, without first consulting God. Lord, what do You want me to do? Where do You want me to invest my energies? How do You want me to spend my time today, and in what things do You want me to invest the talents You have given me?

James is calling Christians to that idea of total surrender to God, that idea of saying: If God wills, we will do this or that. Any attitude other than that, any attitude of independence, as though to say, I have some things and God has others, and I have the right to choose what I give God and what I keep for myself—that is an attitude of utter arrogance.

And so, in this same passage, James adds: “But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil, and to the one who knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin.” In other words, sometimes we are boastful, proud, arrogant, not because we openly say, I am going to do what I want, but because we live as though we can do what we want. And that attitude is deeply offensive in the Presence of the Lord.

What God wants from us, rather, is an attitude of total surrender, yielding ourselves and being open to His will. And when we have that attitude, do you know what? Then the heavenly Father delights in giving us everything we desire. When we humble ourselves, God exalts us, lifts us up, and places us in positions of great power and great authority in His Kingdom. May the Lord bless us, and we will continue this meditation in our next message.