Surrender

"Lord, do You really want me to surrender that? Are You sure?" I don’t know how you cope with giving up things you like. Maybe you’re a person who has no problem with that, and with giving up control? What do you do if the Lord asks you to give something up, or surrender something?

I thought I was okay about letting Him be Lord of my life, and I had no problem with
that, until He started to asking me to surrender specific things to Him. That’s when the wrestling and questioning really started. Do You really want that Lord? I even tried to give Him just some parts of my life, and keep control of the other parts I liked. But the Lord’s very clear and He makes no compromises. Surrender means to give up all of it completely, and not just the bits and pieces I want to hand over.

When we look at Abraham and his son Isaac, we see God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and I guess Abraham was wrestling with that. “Really God, You want my son Isaac, my loved one? Can’t I just give You some of his life? I could send Him to serve You wherever you want! But to sacrifice him to death? That seems a bit too much”. I can imagine how he might have tried to do a deal with the Lord.

Finally Abraham took his son, in obedience, and went to the place where the sacrifice was to take place. He gave all of his son to the Lord. He surrendered completely and may have stopped any trying to make a bargain with the Lord.

And that’s what the Lord wanted – for Abraham to give everything to Him, so that He had control over it. And God honoured this and saved the boy’s life.

And it’s the same with our sacrifice. When the Lord asks us to give up things we should be obedient and trust that He knows what’s best for us and the situation we’re in. And we shouldn’t start to try and make a deal with Him - even though we might be tempted to do that. The Lord loves it when we surrender everything to Him, even though it’s hard. He either gives everything back to us, just as Abraham got back his son, or He’ll take our sacrifice and give us something different but much better.

The great thing is that, whichever of these two it is, it will be good for us. The amazing thing is we’ll grow in our faith in Him. For when we look at the story of Abraham and Isaac, we see that a blessing came out of his obedience. And that’s the greatest encouragement we can get - a blessing from God. Let’s aim for that. If the Lord asks you today to make a specific sacrifice for Him, how will you respond?

Prayer: Lord, You know my struggles when You ask me to surrender things to You as a sacrifice. Please help me in those times to remember the story of Abraham and his obedience towards You, that I may give my sacrifices completely and freely to You and trust that You will take it and bless me. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.