Today I seem unable to publish the photo I wished to place here, so I'll just get on with a few comments. A week ago I wrote about the Judge and Prophet Samuel imploring the people of Israel to RETURN to the Lord, their God, then to REJECT their foreign gods and their evil practices, and following that to PREPARE their hearts before the Lord, and finally, to SERVE the Lord and to serve Him only. In the New Testament the writer James, the half brother of our Lord, wrote something similar insofar as the sequence is concerned, he implored his readers to first SUBMIT themselves to God and to then RESIST the devil.
And these steps have caused me to reflect a great deal on the subject of SURRENDER. The Lord's chosen people, Israel, and we, His Church, and particularly when it comes down to the individual, me, and you, find it difficult to fully submit, to fully return, to fully reject the foreign objects of our affection, and to fully resist the devil. And the question is why? Why is full surrender so difficult? Obviously if I knew the perfect and full answer I would likely be a much sought after sage. But I do have a few thoughts.
Why would one hesitate or be reluctant to fully surrender ones' all to an all-wise, all-caring, all-loving, all-powerful Heavenly Father? What is their to lose in such surrender other than our inner turmoil, our vain struggles, our futile efforts at self reform? It would seem to be such an obvious win-win that people would be lined up to enter into such a transaction with the God of the universe. But, alas! It is not so. One reason that occurs to me is trust. We know the right concepts about God, we've mastered the theological vocabulary, but do we fully trust Him? Oh yes, we've trusted Him with the eternal destiny of our immortal soul. That's then. Full surrender of my life and my will and my plans and my possessions, well, that's not then, it is now. And now is the realm in which I live. And so it is what I perceive it costing me right now that causes me to draw back. And is it not because I do not trust God enough to believe He will do better for me than I can do for myself? If I surrender all, might He not require of me something that I either can't do or would not wish to do? As the old song goes, "Please don't send me to Africa!" Isn't that kind of thinking more or less as the heart of the matter? I can't really trust God to let me do what I want to do. He'll require me to be and to do what I don't want to be and do. To think that God is forging some kind of plan for my surrendered will and life that is designed to make me forever misrable is to distrust God as being all-wise, all-loving, all-caring, and all-powerful. There's more to be said, but think about this. As the saying goes, "chew on this for a while."