The price of not surrendering to God
Introduction
In Acts 9:6 we can read an account of the apostle Paul’s conversion experience:
“And [Paul] trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
Your Bible may not contain this particular passage, but instead, just Paul asking who is speaking to him, and Jesus replying to him with instructions on what to do next.
We know for sure though that this is how the apostle Paul reacted when Jesus confronted him on the way to Damascus, because he later confirmed it when he gave his testimony (Acts 22:10).
A frightened Paul, asked the Lord Jesus—whose followers he had been furiously persecuting for probably many years: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
Everything Paul had ever done in his life, everything he had hoped to do in the future, as well as his immediate plans to take more Christian prisoners (this time, from Damascus), all of that suddenly completely changed when Jesus confronted him.
All he could muster to ask was: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
From one moment to another in his life, trembling and astonished, Paul was ready to then and there completely surrender to Jesus.
Confession time
Sermons about “surrendering everything to God” are not an uncommon thing. I have heard dozens of those since I am a teenager. They always make me feel uncomfortable, because they remind me that I have yet to surrender everything.
I always hear that deceptive voice that tries to rationalize away my need to surrender to God: “Maybe it is true that you have not surrendered everything, but you have given up all these many things that were so dear to you, and you live a very different life from everyone else. Also, you try to help many other people around you and to glorify God, so that should be enough.”
This voice never soothes me though.
I always eventually have to manually push these thoughts out of my mind.
Still, I am left with the question: What else could I surrender?
I do have some things that come to mind when I ask that, and I am always trembling and astonished at the thought of surrendering them:
First and foremost, there is my wife’s happiness and well-being. What if God called us to move somewhere where we would depend on a miracle for her fragile health to be sustained? What if she had to give up her dreams and ambitions? What if she couldn’t be around her family and friends anymore? I tremble at the thought of subjecting her to any of these circumstances.
Then, there are my cats. Feel free to make fun of me, but I love my cats. The thought of going somewhere and having to part with them breaks my heart. What if God asked me to surrender them to the care of another?
Third, there is my stability. I spent most of my 20s travelling, jumping between one underpaid job to the next, constantly changing goals and basically achieving nothing. I have since come to crave stability, but what if God asked me to start my life from scratch again, or worse, to live a life without any sort of routine or predictability?
I am also afraid of the future; afraid about whether my wife and I will have a place to retire to, and since we do not have any children, I wonder who will take care of us in our old age. I know that Jesus is coming soon, but when He will come, no one knows. So, how do I prepare for old age? What if God asks me to surrender my retirement plans?
Last but not least, after having given up on pretty much all the worldly interests that I had in my youth, what am I left with? I love creative work, and I love writing the most. I like teaching, preaching, and counseling, but what if God actually has a completely different sphere of usefulness for me in mind? What if God asked me to surrender the talents and projects that I enjoy investing my time in?
Compare my rather worldly concerns, with the infinite sacrifice that Jesus made: being separated from the love of God the Father and the Holy Spirit; leaving the joys and the glory of Heaven, where He was adored by a myriad of angels; to come to this sin-sick world and die the undeserved death of a criminal. In Philippians 2:5-8, Paul expresses the same thought thus:
(5) Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, (6) who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, (7) but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. (8) And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.
I know that if I did the will of God and nothing but His will, I would feel happier and more fulfilled. However, I only know that in theory, not from experience. I have not “tasted” neither “seen” (Psalms 34:8). I do not have a personal experience with God, not one that involves complete surrender anyway.
No hesitation
However, when Jesus called Saul on the way to Damascus, the man was not going through the same experience that I was. He was not afraid of surrendering. In fact, he may have thought that persecuting Christians was the calling that God had given him. Who knows? Yet, when confronted with the One whose followers he was persecuting, trembling and astonished, after he realized—in a blink of an eye, as it were—who Jesus truly was, he was immediately ready to surrender: “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
Yet, look at what it took for Saul to surrender: Nothing short of beaming an overpowering flash of light onto him, then yelling into his ear about how he was “kicking against the goads” (Acts 9:5), and finally, making him go blind for three days (verse 9). I mean, if Paul had not surrendered after that experience, I doubt that he would have ever surrendered at all.
The sad truth—and my confession—is that, unlike Paul, never once in my life, have I made a prayer in which I surrendered everything to God. Not a single time. This is despite the fact that God has shown me many times that I have yet to make that full surrender. I have asked Him to reveal His will to me. I have followed His will in many aspects. God has providentially guided me throughout the years. Yet, I also acknowledge that I have not accomplished a tenth, yea, a thousandth, of what I could have, both for mankind and for the glory of God, had I truly, completely, and utterly, surrendered everything and anything in my life to God.
What suffering must the Lord allow me to go through before I learn to surrender everything? Must Jesus strike me with blindness so that I learn to completely depend on Him for survival, rather than on my self-sufficient autonomy and independence? I am trembling and astonished at the thought!
This is what happens to so many people: They live their lives moving from one tragedy to the other, trying to survive on their own, while every time they suffer the consequences of their own choices, Jesus is right there, pleading with them to listen to His voice and surrender to His guidance, so He can steer them to a joyful and useful existence, now and forever. Eternal death will therefore, be nothing more than the final refusal to surrender. A life of misery that ends with damnation is what the price of not surrendering to God is.
Would it not be far better to surrender it all right here, right now, and avoid such a fate?
Do you feel trembling and astonished at the thought of surrendering everything to God?
Are you afraid to utter the words, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”
Are you as afraid as I am to be placed in potentially disagreeable circumstances or to lose all that you have worked so hard to build and accomplish?
I cannot appeal to you to make a full surrender, for I have not made it myself. So, all I can do, is hope and pray, that by the grace of God, we will all come to a place where we surrender everything to God.
“[Be] confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” Philippians 1:6.