“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belong to it, do you submit to its rules?” (Colossians 2:20)
We surrender everything to God because He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. There is nothing that He cannot do, nothing that He does not know about. He can bring us comfort, peace, good health, wealth and satisfaction. When we surrender all, our eternity is assured. He said, “I will fight for you.” (Exodus 14:14); that means there is someone we will have to contend with – our enemy. He promises to scatter them. They will come one way and depart in seven. There has never been a battle that God did not win; never a life He cannot save. The worst sinner is assured of a place in His kingdom when he surrenders. When one of the criminals that were crucified with Jesus on Calvary realised who Jesus was and pleaded with Him; “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, Jesus answered: “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)
Submission
‘I surrender all’ requires total submission to the One we call Lord. Jesus is Lord and when we honour Him as Lord He honours us as His friends. Young adolescents have a tendency to fall from the mother tree in a bid to live an independent life. Whilst this may be true of fruits and the mother tree and even of our relationship with our parents, with God the link is permanent and must not be severed. Just as the plant needs the sun to survive, our whole being thrives when we surrender all we have and are to Jesus.
If Jesus is our Shepherd then we must fully depend on Him as His sheep. No sheep has a mind of its own, therefore it surrenders its will to the shepherd otherwise it will stray away from the fold and that would be its doom.
One area in which we often put up resistance is in our finances. We believe that our wealth was sourced through self-effort. Wealth and riches belong to God. “Bur remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” (Deuteronomy 8:18) Our wealth comes from God; He is the one that bestows blessings on us to become rich with silver and gold, yet we want to put Him out of the picture in order to tap ourselves on the back. The God of the universe says: “The silver is mine, the gold is mine.” (Haggai 2:8)
Everybody would like to spend money anyhow without reference to God, yet whatever wealth we can boast of is entrusted to us. It is not ours. How we spend it matters to God. If we submit our finances to Him and listen to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, be sure we shall be on the right track; besides, our source will never run dry. When Solomon succeeded his father David as king, he asked God for wisdom to be able to govern God’s people. God gave him wealth in the bargain. But at the tail end of his reign, he mingled with foreign women and started spending money on them building altars and making sacrifices to their idols and he ended up a failure. (1 Kings 11:1-13)
The hymn writer continues, ‘worldly pleasure all forsaken,’ ‘make me Saviour wholly thine (yours),’ ‘Lord I give myself to thee (you).’ That spells it out in detail. The sacrifices we have to make are all comprehensive, we leave no stone unturned. God can better manage our lives than what we think and claim.
Many see having to surrender to God as interference in their personal matters and fail to understand that they are more at ease when God is in control of their affairs. They would rather give Satan a foothold, only to end up in chains. The devil is not a friend. His motive is to upset the cart. He has a hidden agenda and that is to compromise our walk with God. This life does not end here; it will continue in either heaven or in hell. The choice is ours.
When our Lord Jesus recruited the twelve disciples, He invited them to “Come, follow me.” This implied leaving everything behind, all that seems to matter for them. Once, He taught them that following Him had a price tag and not all of them could accept to go the whole hog. Some of them said: “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” (John 6:60) As a result “many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.” (John 6:66) Did the others want to leave too? Simon the head disciple stated: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (verses 68-69)
Would it be a worthwhile sacrifice to stick with Him and to surrender it all? Jesus said: “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:33) He said also: “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” ( Matthew 19:29)
If you will surrender to Christ, sing with me. “Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise. Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of thy love. Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for thee. Take my voice, and let me sing, always only for my King. Take my lips, and let them be, filled with messages from thee. Take my silver and my gold; not a mite will I withhold. Take my intellect, and use every power as Thou shalt choose. Take my will, and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine. Take my heart – it is thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne. Take my love: my Lord, I pour at thy feet its treasure-store. Take myself, and I will be ever only all for thee. (Hymn 400 Methodist Hymn book)
Jesus will take what we have given Him and multiply it for our benefit. Say “I surrender all!” and mean it.