Rescue: Finding God In Life's ChallengesSample

"Surrender" 

Surrender is that moment when all your ideas, all your hopes, all your posturing, all your scheming, all your lifelines are over and done, and you are totally and completely at someone else’s mercy. 

We often think of surrender in terms of war.  In a battle, surrender usually leads to imprisonment, torture or death.  So if you find yourself in a fight, you do everything you can to avoid surrender because that’s usually the end of your story.

Today we are going to look at two Biblical stories of surrender – Daniel’s friends in the Fiery Furnace and Jesus in the Garden before his arrest. What you’ll discover is, in the economy of God, surrender isn’t the end of the story.  It’s where the story starts to get interesting!

In Daniel 3, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego find themselves in a no-win situation: deny God, or deny the king who fancied himself a god.  In making their choice and in choosing to offend the king, it was game over: at the cost them their lives. Just before their fiery demise, the three friends declare to the king that they know God will save them from burning to death, but in verse 18 -- in an extraordinary display of submission to the sovereignty of God – they say “But even if He doesn’t…”

Complete surrender.  

Are you yet in the place where you trust God, even if He doesn’t save you in your crisis? Or is your “surrender” qualified on the problem working out to your satisfaction? 

In the Garden of Gethsemane, Matthew tells us that three times Jesus begged God for escape from His anguishing circumstance, “Let this cup of suffering be taken away from Me.” But like the friends in Daniel, three times Jesus added this critical coda, “Yet I want Your will to be done, not Mine.”

Complete surrender.

Are you yet in the place where you trust His will for you, even if it might mean more anguish in the short term?

As we read these two stories, it’s essential to note that the moment of surrender didn’t save our heroes from further demise. In neither story does God stop the drama from getting worse - Jesus was arrested, beaten and crucified, and Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were tossed in the flames.  It would be great if it was true, but surrender isn’t a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.

If you are in a challenging season, realize that the moment of surrender in your own life is also the moment when God’s plan can take precedence.  And when God finally takes over, impossible becomes the ignition for incredible!

But not before complete surrender.