This week I was out of town. So I asked one of my students to speak in my place. He recorded it so I could listen yesterday. He has revealed something I keep thinking about. Surrender without obedience is just laziness.
I have heard so many sermons and talks about surrendering to God, but it seems all the talks commonly stop at a similar point.
Surrender does mean learning to let go of all your worries, anxieties, expectations, and develop a dependent posture toward God. The only way God is going to lead you and come near to you is when you truly surrender, throw your hands up, and become fully dependent on Him.
My student spoke last week about his decision to drop out of school to truly develop this sort of faith.
"I don't want my life to make sense. I want to lose all care and worry for the future in order to gain boldness and courage in the present, so I can love people and get to know God better TODAY."
As a college pastor, it is no new thing to hear a student say, "college just isn't for me" or "I'm just gonna quit". Most of the time these are poor excuses for laziness, but this is entirely different. My student was clear to state that this not just a lazy decision to give up, but that, in fact, it was going to be much more difficult for him. He realized that if was going to abandon everything to follow Christ, there would be obedience on the other side of that surrender.
We don't hear that often enough.
We like the sound of letting go of our worry and anxiety to surrender, but we do not often enough hear or understand that once we develop a dependent posture toward God and His will for us, there WILL be work to be done.
Surrender is not an aversion of responsibility. Surrender is not an excuse to bum your way through life.
Surrender to God is a relentless openness to Him and His leading. Surrender to God is a lifestyle and lifetime of entangling our hearts with His.
But there is obedience on the other side of surrender.
