Surrender and Sacrifice

Easter, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ, is my favorite holiday (originated from holy day). This week, as I am reflecting on the events that led up to His resurrection, I’m once again reminded of Christ’s complete sacrifice of love when He gave His life as a ransom for my sin.

What absolute, amazing love! God so loved the world that He gave His only Son . . . Jesus surrendered to the will of the Father (Philippians 2:5–11), and only did what the Father asked of Him, even submitting to death to pay the ultimate sacrifice for our sin.

Surrender has come up often in the last few months, and I’ve written about it. As I continue to pray that God would mold me into the image of His Son, He keeps showing me areas that I haven’t surrendered to Him. Or maybe at one time I had, but I’ve taken it back and am trying to be the one in control. Again.

This week my Sunday school class started studying James 4.

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:1–3 ESV)

In this passage James directs his statements and admonitions to believers. As I studied these three verses in preparing to teach, I realized that once again God is saying true self-control comes when we yield total control to Him. In reality, while we may think we’re in control, we aren’t. God lets us have our way, and we think that because He does we’re in control and we can orchestrate our own happiness and peace.

Not so according to James. Striving to gain what we do not have, thinking that the next promotion, the next recognition of our talents and abilities, the next paycheck, a new home, car, the latest and greatest technology—whatever we’re striving for . . . whatever we think is going to bring us happiness, contentment—will bring us our heart’s desires and the realization of our dreams is false. Instead it is the root of our lack of patience with other people, our critical and argumentative thoughts or comments, and our failure to hear from God when we finally take these problems to Him.

Prayer should never be a last resort. Yet too many times I’m guilty of that. But praying in order to manipulate God into giving me what I want is wrong, too. All it does is increase my frustration at my inability to truly control anything!

Jesus tells us in Mark 8:35 that if we want to save (read control) our lives we will lose or fail in our efforts. But if we choose to follow Him and “lose” our lives to His control, then we will save them.

One of my favorite devotional books is Come Away My Beloved by Frances J. Roberts. It is a series of “chats” from God’s viewpoint. In the midst of my thoughts about this topic of surrender and sacrifice, I read this:

“O My children, you behave not as sons and daughters but as strangers. You boast that you serve Me, but in truth you serve your own ego.

“You would make Christianity pleasant and acceptable. Your Savior did not find it so. You would make comfortable and accommodating to your own schedule. He knew nothing of such a false religion.

“Do you truly desire to follow Me? Look for the bloodstained prints of My feet.”

Wow! That convicts me. Especially in the light of what we Christians are remembering this week. What makes me expect life to be “easy”? To be “fun”? To be lived on my own terms? That’s never been God’s plan for me. He put me on this earth to glorify Him, to bring honor to His name, to point others to Him. And it’s not the path to popularity and pleasing people!

One quick look at Jesus’ life and death will tell us that. Yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday when Christ entered Jerusalem seated on a donkey, a symbol of royalty in those days. He proclaimed His Kingdom, fulfilling prophecy. But by the end of the week, He was arrested, went through several unjust trials, and was put on the cross to die. I could focus on His physical suffering, but that’s been covered well in sermons, teachings, and even in the movie The Passion of Christ.

But what Christ dreaded the most was not the pain of His physical suffering. That was nothing compared to the mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering of becoming sin for us on the cross, of experiencing God the Father’s abandonment because He could not look at that sin that Jesus bore. What little I can understand of the anguish Christ suffered, what little I can understand of the sacrifice Christ willingly went through for me, what little I can understand of the magnitude of the love that kept Him there and completed the payment overwhelms me. He did this for me! For you!

Jesus put aside the privileges of His deity—His glory, His riches, His due—in order to die for me. When I begin to grasp even a smidgeon of the enormity of His sacrifice, how can I withhold anything from His control? Why do I consider anything this world has to offer as better and more desirable than following God whole-heartedly? Why do I fall for the lie of anything in this world bringing me happiness and contentment and peace?

Father, forgive my unbelief. May I look only to Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith. May I always remember that only in surrendering my life to You, sacrificing my selfish desires and dreams and attempts at control, will I find truth. The truth that brings lasting peace, contentment, and joy in the midst of life’s ups and downs.

Just two choices on the shelf—pleasing God or pleasing self. (Ken Collier) Which will it be for you?

“What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?” (Psalm 116:12)

When I survey the wondrous cross
On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the death of Christ my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
—Isaac Watts