The Big Surrender – Care to Elaborate?

“I’ve surrendered,” someone told me recently as the person burst into tears. I held wide open my arms and gave the person a heartfelt hug. How grateful I was to hear of the person’s surrender. But when I looked back at the person’s words and the ensuing conversation, something didn’t sit right inside of me. I had heard the person speak of surrender in the past, and sadly the person had quickly returned to old ways rather than to follow through on what the person had described would be a changed life. The overwhelming conviction I had this time around when I looked back at the conversation was that I had absolutely no right to judge, and that I didn’t see the person’s heart as God does. But still, even when I sought to consider the conversation in a positive light, I continued to have a sense that something just wasn’t quite right. And then it came to me. The discernment I had about the person, once I was able to put aside the judgment and to look at the situation with a clear and pure heart, was what I discovered to be a lesson I desperately needed to learn and felt led to pass along to others.

When the person had spoken of surrender, I had assumed the person spoke of a surrender to God. Whether or not this was the case, only God knows. But the lesson for me is that surrender can be a wonderful, and necessary, thing when the surrender is to the Lord. But there is also a surrender that can be devastating, and even ultimately deadly. And this is the surrender we humans can make to our own flesh, to the ways of the world, and to Satan our rival enemy. I do believe the person may have in fact surrendered, but my concern is that the person surrendered to the widespread deception in our world today associated with people, programs, ways, and beliefs that try to make themselves appear as of the Lord but in fact are borne from false, and deadly, teaching.

I may never know to what or whom the person surrendered that day. I can continue to pray for the person as the Lord leads me, but what I realize now is that God used the conversation I had with the person to give me a loving, yet firm, reminder, that there are two sides to surrender. And the only surrender at the end of the day that will reap the rewards of faith, love, forgiveness, mercy, a relationship with God, hope, peace, joy, fulfillment, and the promise of everlasting life in heaven with God is a surrender to the Lord God almighty through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ and a life committed to living according to the ways of the Lord for now and eternity.

Rom 6:16  Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 
Rom 6:17  But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 
Rom 6:18  Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. 
Rom 6:19  I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. 

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