There is something that is one of the hardest things to do as a Christian: surrendering our entire will to Jesus Christ.
I'm going to be brutally challenging with this note (then again, that's not terribly surprising). First, I want to walk you through a story we all know well. Then I'll hit head on what I want to say.
"The Lord said to Abram, 'Leave your native country, your relatives, and you father's family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.'"Genesis 12:1-3
There's the beginning of the promise. You can probably make an accurate connection between Abram leaving his homeland and the title of this note, so I'll leave it to you to connect that as we go on.
"Then the Lord took Abram outside and said to him, 'Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That's how many descendants you will have!' And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted him as righteous because of his faith."Genesis 15:5-6
God promised Abram many, many, many descendants! And yet, we all know how the story goes. He slept with his wife's maidservant, who's child became the descendant of the Arabs. That was his solution to accomplish God's promise. But that's besides the point a bit. He later had a son, Isaac, with his wife Sarai (Sarah).
Isaac was the true fulfillment of God's promise and Abram's desires. He was the first of the many children (descendants) Abram would have. He was Abram's pride and joy, his longings, his desire, and, as I'll show analogously, his will!
"Take your son," the Lord told Abram, "Your only son--yes, Isaac, whom you love so much--and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you."Genesis 22:2
We are called to surrender everything to Christ. Most of us have grown up knowing this, haven't we? We all know that Christ calls us to obedience and to follow Him! But what is truly the raw reality of that truth?
The raw reality is that we come to a place where our will is entirely surrendered to Him! Okay, we're still content and happy enough with that. But we need to truly look at our desires and will! Are we truly willing to give up everything that we want for what He has, regardless of what He has? We are called to be willing to give anything for Him. This has hit hard for me many times in my life. I have always desired to be a missionary oversees, and the last place I wanted to end up is the United States. A number of years ago, the Lord made it really clear to me that He wanted me to surrender that to Him and to be willing to live in the U.S. if that were what He called me to. For years I struggled to come to peace with that! You know why? Because I have feared that in doing so I was accepting that the Lord would have me in the U.S.! The Lord has spoken very clearly to me about this, though! He's told me in my spirit, I don't want you to be concerned with the specifics of what I've called you to. I want you simply to be content in the knowledge that My will is good and that willing to do it whatever it is because you love Me and because I love you.
You see, we don't want to surrender our will because we fear that we have to give up what we surrender! But God doesn't ask us to surrender only what we think He doesn't have for us. He asks us to surrender everything! He promised Abram a child, gave him a child, and then asked him to sacrifice that child! We need to be willing to even surrender and sacrifice our "Isaac's"--those promises we feel the Lord has given us. This is because He wants us to be so wholly surrendered to Him that we will do whatever He wants!
Take something that is so close to you. How about your best friends? How about your major? How about your desired career? What is extremely dear to you? Can you honestly say that you would be willing to give that entirely up if the Lord asked you to?
Yet, that's what He wants! That's why He says that we must be willing to turn our back on even our family! It's not a matter that we need to reject our family, but that we must be willing to reject them. It's a total dependence on His will alone.
Another very personal example: I've always wanted to get married and have a family. I always believed that was the Lord's will for me. Then over a number of years I really began to fear that maybe the Lord did not have that for me and that He might want me to be single. Once this fear set in, I truly became scared that if I even brought that issue before the Lord, He would affirm my fear, so I refused to give it to Him! And yet, He spoke to me for years, saying, I want you to be content and willing to be single for the rest of your life. And that was that. But my fear that He would call me to be single kept me from surrendering that to Him.
For the first time in my life at the beginning of this previous summer, 2010, I became absolutely and totally content that I was going to be single for the rest of my life. For the first time in my life that's how I felt. I finally surrendered the fear and sacrificed that desire for total openness to His plan for me. A couple months later He led me into a dating relationship with one of my best friends!
When Abram was obedient to sacrifice his son--God's very promise and Abram's great desire--God provided that desire.
We're so often told about that story being a test of Abram's faith. It was, but we're taught it so shallowly, aren't we? We have to be able to trust God with everything is usually the moral we're taught, right? But it's so much deeper and greater! We like to teach and accept only what is comforting and doesn't move us beyond the comfort zone of perfectly acceptable and noble, and often even God-honoring (after all, wanting to be an oversees missionary is God-honoring!) desires. But we are called to surrender EVERYTHING! We are called to be WILLING to give up EVERYTHING!
It is at those times of total surrender of will, even to the point where we'd be able to literally sell everything we have (how many of us wouldn't even dare to ask God if that's what He wanted us to do?!) if God wanted us to, that we find total and absolute rest and joy in His will! It is at that point that we don't care what it is, as long as we are in unison with Him, because we know that we would want absolutely nothing else in our lives but what He has for us!
I believe we can only truly experience the peace and freedom of what He's called us to with the extravagance of joy that Paul expressed in his epistles when we are willing to give them up forwhatever the Lord would have for us. When we do, whether He decides to give us what we've surrendered to Him or take it away altogether, we'll truly embrace it knowing the fullness of how much we don't deserve it! (The more we understand how little we deserve something, the more we want to honor the One who gives it to us anyway.)
"'Don't lay a hand on the boy!' the angel* said. 'Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from Me even your son, your only son.'"Genesis 22:12
I don't know about you, but I want to go through the pain of surrendering even my deepest desires because I want the joy and reward of following Christ with all my heart, soul, strength and mind!
*Verse 10 indicates that this is the Angel of the Lord--Jesus--speaking.
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