Surrender is scary. Let’s be real. By the time we’re teenagers, the importance of taking responsibility has been deeply ingrained within us. From cleaning our rooms to handling chores to ensuring we get grades that give us better career options, we’re taught how to take control of our lives. And for the most part, that feels great! We put in hard work, we reap benefits. We earn the grades, we get the scholarships. We push through sports practices, we win championships. We walk across stages, we get corner offices. Eventually, we have homes, families and accolades to show for all the initiative we’ve taken throughout our lives. 

If you’re anything like me, you may have added “a better relationship with God” to your list of goals too. So what do you do? You bring all of your ambition, all of your grit, and all of that initiative into your walk with God. But something different happens. As you hit the ground running with zeal to serve God, you become intentional about volunteering your time, donating to good causes, and showing up consistently within the church and local community. Yet, with all that you do, you feel God tugging at you for more. 

Struggling with this not too long ago, I wondered how could I possibly give God more? Is this not what Jesus talks about in all of the New Testament: giving to the poor, caring for those in need, not forsaking the assembling together? I asked God, “Am I missing something?” And as clear as ever, He said, “Yes.”

Assuming God wanted the same ambition the world wanted from me, I thought I had to do something to receive God’s love. However, there is nothing we can do to deserve or ever earn God’s love for us. Before we choose Him, He has already chosen us. He already loves us. He demonstrates this through the sacrifice of His son Jesus, which was a part of His plan to redeem us before the foundation of the world. It’s a strange concept to grasp, but if you’re going to believe God, you have to believe His Word (the bible) to be true. 

The bible tells us that the Lamb (Jesus) was slain before the foundation of the world. This means that because God is an all-knowing God, He knew humanity would fall. He knew their sin would disconnect them from Him, and being apart from us was never in His plan. So He always had it in His heart to send His son Jesus Christ to die for us, restoring the relationship between God and humanity. We may be 37, 45, or 73 years old before we accept this beautiful gift of communion with God… but he made it available to us before we were ever born. That’s love. 

So when God is asking for our surrender, He’s not asking for ambition. That’s what we’ll discuss in this post. When God asks for our surrender, what exactly is He asking of us?

What It Means to Surrender to God

Because God’s love is a free gift to us, we cannot earn it. Therefore, what God wants more than what we do for him, is our love. He wants our heart. Yes, God still wants our zeal, and ambition, and our gifts – but not in lieu of our hearts. 

When you give your heart to something (or someone), all of the other parts of you will inevitably follow. We’ve got the order wrong. If we work on giving God our hearts, it will become so much easier to give Him anything else. Not because He asks for it, but because you love Him. That’s true surrender: not an act of force or waving a white flag, but an act of pure love.

In this post, I want to challenge everything you’ve learned about surrender. My prayer is that it no longer scares you but becomes your daily pursuit. That when you wake up every day, you look forward to asking God without hesitation, “How can I love you today?” 

As you ask that, understand that what moves a God who created all of heaven and earth, a God who created time, a God who has been in relentless pursuit of you for your entire life, is not stuff. It’s not something external. He’s seeking the one thing He created us with and for: love. 

Barriers to Your Surrender

We can’t address surrender without tackling fear. Giving someone access to your home is scary enough. You’re not likely to invite a stranger to the place with your most prized possessions, including your children or family. So when God asks for something more sacred than that – your heart – the place you’ve tried to protect, the place where your greatest fears and biggest dreams live, the place that is most vulnerable, that can feel impossible. 

What if the people closest to you have been careless with your heart? What if the people who raised you dismissed and greatly damaged your heart? What if everyone you ever chose to give your heart to eventually broke it? God, I don’t exactly have much good to show for all the times someone had access to my heart. How can I trust that you will be different? I’ve worked so hard to guard this heart, I’m not even sure I know how to let you in.

“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

And yet God still stands at the door of our hearts, knocking (Rev 3:20). What then do we do?

If you look closely at the emotions embedded within the questions asked above, you’ll see that they are rooted mostly in fear. These fears are valid in that they were created by real events that took place. Unfortunately, fear can cause us to believe that protection is in how well we’re able to control future outcomes. This, my friend, is a lie. 

Control is an illusion. Even with our best efforts, we have little control in this life. At most, we control what we believe. In this case, it’s who we believe. We can choose to believe in the enemy who tells us there’s something in surrender to be afraid of, that in order to have peace we must have control. Or we can choose to believe God who tells us to trust in Him with all of our hearts and to not lean on our own understanding (Prov 3:5).

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.”

Let’s think about that for a minute. We can believe in a being who was created (Satan) or we can believe in God, the creator, the one who actually has all control. And even with all of his power and control, this God gave us free will because he wants us to trust Him with that control. He wants us to want His control in our lives. Not out of fear or obligation… out of love for the good God that He is.

God isn’t asking us to surrender our control in hopes that He is good. He’s asking because He is good. He could choose to not ask us anything at all. To simply leave us in our miserable lives. Excuse my passion, but I believe we have a misconception about God’s goodness. We have to move from believing God wants to be good to us, to recognizing that He’s already been good to us. 

His patience alone is proof of His goodness. His willingness to wait on us to catch on to what He’s already done for us – while we were yet in sin – is proof of His goodness. This is what makes giving God your yes so much easier. Perhaps your question for God should be: God, will you help me see how you’ve already been good to me? And as you reflect on all of His goodness, allow His track record to fuel your faith that He will continue to be good to you. 

God can do more with our “yes” than we can do with our entire lives. If I’m going to surrender my will, my control, and my heart to someone, you better believe it’s going to be the one who is all-knowing, all-seeing, and all-powerful. Because anything I will ever need, He’s not only aware of, He’s capable of supplying it. 

Selective Surrender v. Full Surrender

For most of my life, I thought I was surrendered to God. However, I had selective surrender. I was willing to give only what I was willing to give. There were areas of my heart and life that were simply easier to yield. Others, too hard. And instead of using all that ambition I talked about at the beginning of this post to endeavor the hard task of surrendering all, I settled for surrendering what felt safe. 

Then I got to a place where I wanted more of God. What we had was cute, but I desired more. However, I knew the closeness I was craving with God had a cost. It would cost me the areas of my heart that I’d been refusing to release. It would cost me the vices that I’d become dependent on. It would cost me friendships and relationships that pulled me away from God. Thinking about this was overwhelming. So much so, that I – in all honesty – told God I couldn’t live the life He was asking me to live. I’d been serving in my local church and trying to live this life wholeheartedly for years. I’d get so frustrated every time I found myself in similar cycles or defeated by sin yet again, and this time I was tired. I was sick of failing so horribly. 

So, I began planning to step down from all my ministries and just attend church as a member trying to focus on her walk with God. After multiple failed attempts to master this lifestyle, I decided that maybe it just isn’t for me. Knowing this is now how I felt, I dared not pretend to be something in public that I wasn’t going to try to be in private. This particular day was a Saturday, which was right in time for me to quit everything the next day after church service. 

Giving God Your Yes

During Sunday morning church service, my mind was made up. I started to go through the motions, and during worship, God made what felt like a final plea. He challenged me to forget about everything I thought I’d had to surrender. Forget about how much I’d lose or how hard life would be. Forget about all of that! And he asked me one question.

He asked, “Will you trust me with one day?” 

He asked me to give Him 24 hours. Not to show me what I could do, but what He could do. He was asking me to trust that he could sustain me for 24 hours. That He could give me everything I needed for 24 hours. It didn’t sound like much to me. Like, why would God only want 1 day? That’s nothing. That felt easy. That felt safe. Feeling like I had nothing to lose, like I’d tried everything else I knew to do, I said yes.

And here’s what happened. Saying yes to God for that day allowed me to exchange my cares and my fears for peace and joy. For 24 whole hours, I knew I was in right-standing with God. I knew God was pleased with me. I felt God’s Holy Spirit keeping me. I mean, it was only 24 hours. I had no doubt that God had the power to keep for that long because He had done it before. That night, I laid my head down with fulfillment, knowing that I was in alignment with God, even if only for one day. 

As I drifted to sleep, though, I felt the worries trying to resurface. What now? What about tomorrow? Could I trust God to keep me for weeks, and months, and years… forever and ever amen? Why bother trying when I know I won’t last? Then I fell asleep.

Finding Strength to Stay Surrendered

As I woke, before my thoughts could bombard me the way they usually do, I heard God again. 

“Will you trust me with one day?” 

Huh? Is this a joke? And then my eyes were opened to a new truth about surrender.

This is exactly what surrender is: a brand new yes every day. It is returning to God for His strength each and every day. This isn’t an expectation for perfection either. It’s a decision to come to God no matter what happens, good, bad or ugly. God wants to be in relationship with us, and He’s given us grace to ensure we can stay in relationship with Him. This grace is what gives us access to His strength, and we access that grace through surrender.

God never intended for us to succeed at this life with our strength alone. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need Him. When we come to God with our “yes,” accepting His power and His strength, He gives us the grace we need to actually surrender. I thought I needed God when I got weak, but truth be told, I am always weak. Which means I always need God. Even when we feel strong, we need God. Even when we think we can surrender, we need God’s power to surrender. Grace gives us power.

This is why Jesus says in 2 Corinthians 12:9-11: My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

He doesn’t say, “when you are weak,” he just says weakness. If we are going to live the life God designed for us, fully surrendered, we must recognize that we are always in need of God’s power to do so. 

I had been surrendering wrong. I was surrendering in my own strength. It wasn’t until I gave up trying that God could finally show me His strength. 

The Promise of Surrender

The sooner we get to the end of ourselves and let God be God, the sooner we can reap the benefits of His promises. And what is God’s promise regarding surrender? Let’s look back at the Proverbs scripture I shared earlier – it gets me so excited! 

Proverbs 3:5-6 says: 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

The promise of surrender is alignment. When I surrendered to God for that one day, I was able to experience peace, joy, rest, fulfillment, patience, God’s strength and so much more… because I had finally aligned my will with God’s. That allowed His love and blessings to flow freely to me, strengthening the love I feel for Him in return. So that next morning when He asked me again if I would trust Him with my day, I didn’t respond out of fear or obligation. I said yes because I wanted to. That’s how love works. And that’s how surrender works, through love. 

It’s been over a year since that day I chose to fully trust God. And my life has not been the same. Not only has His love not stopped flowing to me – covering me, keeping me, refining me, and comforting me –  it now flows through me. To people like you who desire to know more about God. I’ve discovered my identity in Christ and I’m living out God’s call on my life. I still experience hardships and suffering, but I know I’m not in this alone. I know I have God’s strength to carry me every step of the way.

On the other side of surrender… is a love so rich, so full, and so kind that it will permeate every aspect of your being. Doing life with God will make your total surrender feel like the very least you can do for one who is worthy of so much more.

Thank you for reading!