I urge you to surrender your will, your knowledge, your reason, your experience, your motives, your time, your treasure, your plans, your future, your desires, your comfort — your everything — to God. And not simply to God, but to God and his ways, his purpose, and his desire to bring you into a right relationship with himself. This is a challenging request, to be sure, but God is sovereign, and you are not. There is absolutely nothing that happens in the universe that is outside of God’s influence and authority. As King of kings and Lord of lords, God has no limitations. The sovereignty of God is not merely that God has the power and right to govern all things, including his creation, man (you), but that he does govern all things, always and without exception, in your life as well as in mine. Surrender to his authority, and all will be well for you.
Friend, do not love the world and its temporary distractions. Learn to be disinterested in the world and what it expects of you and concentrate instead on God. Love him more than yourself and his glory more than approval and praise for yourself. This requires you to hold his will in higher regard than your own. Nothing about the world can be enjoyed in its proper perspective until you lay down your will and surrender yourself completely to God. To surrender is to accept whatever God sends and do nothing to try to change it. Do not allow pride and ambition to keep you from becoming who God, in his mercy, designed you to be. Do not trust your own power or knowledge. Your aim should not be greatness but humility, to surrender completely, to become lowly rather than haughty in spirit, to be concerned only with how to glorify God.
Beloved, this is the confidence you have in approaching God: that if you ask for anything according to his will, he hears you. Submit yourself, then, to God. Come near to him, and he will come near to you. Do not be foolish, but understand and remember what the Lord’s will is, that you turn away from your own will, which, being of the flesh, will always lead you astray.
God graciously provided you and me with Jesus as the cure for our sins. It is best that you place complete confidence in him as your means for partaking in the eternal life to come, that blessed fellowship with God. Remember that God did not send his Son into the world to judge the world guilty, but to save the world through his willing sacrifice. Christ is the gift, which is sufficient evidence of God’s love for you. Submit yourself to Christ, then, and believe in his power to restore you to a right relationship with God. He who believes in the Son is not condemned. Those who believe in Jesus will receive God’s special love, and they shall never perish but shall be saved with everlasting salvation. It is good for you in every way to accept this truth, and surrender all, once and for all, to God, your Creator, and Jesus, your Savior.
I know it sounds odd to forego your own will, to lay your plans aside and rid yourself of all hunger for power and control. You will struggle over and over again to surrender completely, just as I do. But I promise you, the more you seek God’s will rather than your own, the better your life will be. I pray you learn to yield and that you do so with a joyful heart. May it be so!
