Surrender

If you were to ask me when I was "saved", I would tell you that I felt God's presence for the first time when I was in seventh grade at a "spiritual emphasis" event that my school entertained every year. I went through the whole "pray this prayer" and the tears and the hugging and the "with every head bowed and with every eye closed" shebang (Christian school kids: you know exactly what I'm talking about). I'm not going to open up a debate about "once saved always saved" or entertain hypothetical scenarios about if I had died the next day where my soul would have spent its eternity or anything like that. I just know that that experience was the start of an inward transformation. It took three years, but I truly trusted God with my life and started following Jesus when I was in tenth grade. I can't pinpoint a specific date or sermon or praise and worship song, but I do know that that was the year when I surrendered, in full, to the King of kings and I haven't looked back. Maybe I'm not qualified to say anything about any of this because I've been active in my faith for a mere four or five years. And there is room for that I suppose, but to that I would say that based off of Biblical characters such as Paul, I don't believe that God uses duration of faith as a qualification for much of anything. He uses a surrendered and an eager spirit, which is my main point.

I went to Christian school in Michigan for preschool through half of second grade and then again in North Carolina for half of sixth grade through my senior year of high school. I remember when I was younger seeing posters on the walls with cute sayings about trusting God. Some had little animated characters on them, others had baby animals. The words were typically written with some bold and colorful font. I remember one acronym specifically: FROG--Fully Rely On God. Clever, right? It's an easy way to remember a simple command.

Okay, now pause. Let me elaborate on what I mean when I say "a simple command". Nothing is really stimulated intellectually when I say or when you read the acronym "fully rely on God". It's simple to understand. It's simple to claim "I have faith in God" and it's simple for the person listening to comprehend what you are saying. But allow me to be clear (and I can really only speak for myself though I believe I am not alone in this): there is very little that is simple or easy about getting to a place where I can truthfully say that I fully rely on God. I'd venture to say that there is nothing simple about that. It's painful, it can be ugly, and it means going against everything that our society would have us do.

Yesterday, I found myself seriously hesitating to give God control over every part of my life. And let's be honest: that was not the first time and I'm certain it will not be the last. At the beginning of this post when I said that in tenth grade I surrendered, in full, to Christ, that was the first time. As a Christian, that surrender is supposed to occur every day, every hour, every second. It is a relentless surrender. If I were to just scratch the surface of the question: "is a person once saved, always saved?" I would say that many people find themselves where I found myself in seventh grade at least once in their lives. I AM NOT QUALIFIED TO SAY FOR CERTAIN AND MY OPINION COULD CHANGE AT ANY TIME BECAUSE I AM NINETEEN YEARS OLD WITH A LOT TO LEARN AND I AM IN NO WAY MAKING ANY JUDGMENTS...but...I think many people feel the overwhelming presence of God, surrender to that presence in the heat of the moment with a lot of people around and emotions going haywire, and then leave it at that. Pardon my boldness, but I'm not sure I believe that that is true surrender. My decision in tenth grade was made consciously. It was a rational decision and I cannot pinpoint specifics about when I did it because it was a mental and a spiritual decision before it was an emotional one. But that decision to surrender should be a moment to moment ritual.

"And a scribe came up and said to [Jesus], 'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' Another of the disciples said to him, 'Lord, let me first go and bury my father.' And Jesus said to him, 'Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.'" 

Matthew 8:19-22 ESV

Had these men made the decision then and there to follow Jesus, every day they would have to choose to continue following Jesus. What we Christians don't think about sometimes is how easy it is to just stop following Jesus. We can get a little sidetracked while we're walking, or get tired, or hungry, or just flat-out lazy. These men could easily turn around and have a comfortable place to sleep or spend time with a mourning family. They could trail far behind Jesus claiming to "follow" Him, but really hang back because they are still holding on to something outside of what Jesus wants and has for them. But, the further those men would follow Jesus away from those things, the more difficult it would be for them to go back to those comforts because they would be so close to Jesus and so far from their former lives. Neither one of the things the men are holding on to is inherently sinful, but a life with Jesus means living radically. It means surrendering constantly and immediately. It means releasing control and giving up the life I've planned for myself. It means having unswerving faith in God over every part of me. It means a new life and a new purpose so grand, the thought of the life I'd planned becomes repulsive and embarrassing. It means that choosing to live this life that was so graciously given to me is all or nothing with no turning back.