Surrender

On Sunday, our church had baptism and our preacher said that he had challenged one of the baptism candidates to think on this word in deciding whether to go through with her Baptism. I can't remember if she was from a faith that sprinkles or if she had never been baptized, but the point was that she needed to contemplate the thought of surrendering her life to Christ.......


Since then I have not been able to get the topic of surrender off my mind....What does it really mean to surrender....Being the good school teacher I am I went to the dictionary......The following is what the dictionary defines as surrender....

• To relinquish possession or control of to another because of demand or compulsion.
  
• To give up in favor of another.
  
• To give up or give back (something that has been granted): surrender a contractual right.
  
• To give up or abandon: surrender all hope.
  
• To give over or resign (oneself) to something, as to an emotion: surrendered himself to grief.
  
• Law To restore (an estate, for example), especially to give up (a lease) before expiration of the term.

While these are all good definitions, none of them really seem to sum up what surrender meant to me as follower of Jesus......So I turned to the book I should have looked at the first time....The B-I-B-L-E ( I hope you sang the song as you read it, I was singing as I typed)

Anyway, As I looked through scripture online I searched the word surrender, and all I found was lots of verses in the Old Testament where God caused the enemies to surrender.....I thought about what it meant to surrender and I decided to look up the words "lay down"....there I found my answer in John 15:13

"Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

Jesus was, and still is, our perfect example of surrender...God's word exemplifies surrender so clearly in this passage.....I'm not saying that today all of us need to go out today and stand in the way of MAC truck to save someone, but think about all the things that Jesus laid down, surrendered, to save us........

He gave up all the riches of Heaven and we can not even tithe

He gave up the presence of the Father to enter a sinful, fallen world, and we can not even go across the street!

He gave up the stereotypes of His time to minister to the "woman at the well", but we avoid those who look different, smell different, act different!

He gave up His comfort, but we can not even get up early once a week to spend time with Him!

He gave up His physical body as it was beaten and nailed, yet we complain about working too much and getting tired!

He gave up His life, but we can not give up a day!

As a Christian I was challenged by my pastor's words Sunday to think about surrender.....My thought is....... What have I really surrendered???? I challenge you like my pastor challenged me to examine your life and truly seek to surrender to Him......After all He surrendered so much for us!