Last week at the Grace Campus Ministries meeting the idea—or necessity, rather—of surrender kept cropping up. We spoke of surrender in the context of trusting in God to provide, and we spoke of surrender in the context of a life of obedience to the Spirit; we spoke of the surrender of our own control and vision, and we spoke of surrendering the expectations of ourselves and others. One conclusion we reached was that often God continues to work on us and put us through stretching circumstances until our vision is Him—not service to Him, or some impersonal concept of good, or other people. We want an idea of where we are going in life—whether God wants us to go to grad school, whether He wants us in seminary, whether He wants us in the country or out of it, an idea of what we are supposed to do in the future. But God is infinitely more concerned with who we are, rather than what we are. He gains nothing by giving us clarity of our future course…He knows the plans He has for us, and they are good plans (Jer 29:11-14). Often, a clear understanding of the work God has for us can distract us from Him Who is to consume our vision. It is when our whole heart seeks God that we find Him; and it is when we find Him that we can be assured of walking out His good plans for us. Where we go in life and what we accomplish is of negligible impact compared to Who we look to for direction, providence, and relationship. God doesn't need our service; in some cases, perhaps, it may be true to say that we need our service to God, as it relates to sanctification…I don't know. But God doesn't, of course, depend on us for good works. He calls us to do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with Him (Micah 6:8), and I believe the focus there is on who we are (crucified with Christ, living only through Him Gal 2:20) rather than what we do. The works flow out of a right heart—evidence of that heart, but by no means the issue—as can be seen from Jesus words on good trees bearing good fruit, as well as other passages. And yet we can so easily get focused on how God can use us, what He wants to accomplish through us, always seeming to want clarity of our situation and/or future more than clarity of His Face.
Here's what Oswald Chambers says about this: "We slander God by our very eagerness to work for Him without knowing Him…This is your line of service - to see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself." It seems so simple…look to Jesus, abide in Him, be still and know God, trust the Father, surrender to the ministrations of the Spirit; abandon our perceived rights to our perceived control. Where is our planning, our preparation? Our plans are already made, and it is God who takes control of our preparation. It really is that simple. It's not "see that there is nothing between Jesus and yourself" and then, once that's taken care of, proceed to the next step. The entirety of our essential purpose is to know God through the Son to the Glory of the Father.
It's hard to get that solidly in my mind. I said that this is simple; it is not, however, easy. Western culture and human nature both seem to be against us. It seems irresponsible to not have some worry for the future…but is it? C. S. Lewis mentions that we humans are meant to live in neither the past nor the future—but if we must pick one, it is better to live in the past, for at least then we can understand that events are firmly under God's control. When we focus on the future, it is nearly impossible to trust absolutely God's control over circumstances; we don't see that He has every bit as much control over the future as He did (or does) over the past. We become in a small way our own gods, trusting in our control over our path. Oswald Chambers says that the disposition of sin is the idea of "my right to myself." I think this usurped right is easily seen when we find ourselves thinking that we direct our paths and our future well-being depends on our plans. One of JH Ranch's mottos is "Live in the Now;" I think that is one of many of the Ranch's lessons that should be continually developed once a camper is back in the "real world." For the real world preaches a doctrine of individual responsibility over the future of one's life, but we Christians know, along with Jeremiah, that "a man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps." I suppose this doesn't mean that plans are necessarily bad…but plans held too tightly certainly are. If the motivation in planning is to control where one goes, that's a problem; if the motivation is simply to better understand one's responsibilities in the present, then I think planning is good.
For it is in the present that our responsibility lies…the future doesn't really come into it, nor, I think, does the past. Our purpose is to know God, and to live by the Spirit of God as children of God. Our ideas of the future can, I believe, get in the way of sensing the Spirit in the immediacy of the now. Surrender is not a thing of the future, but a thing of the present. Why then is it so difficult to stay focused on the now and here? Brennan Manning combines those two words, saying our attention should be on the Nowhere: on the immediacy of an intimate relationship with an ever-present Creator to Whom time and place don't really matter. Obedience isn't so much of a choice, but a yielding…a yielding to Christ's sanctifying power, His personality, to the nudges of the Spirit. Perhaps surrender would be much easier if we could step back from our expectations and stifle the distractions of an imagined future: after all, God will be the same in the future as He is in the present, as He has been in the past, and it is to Him we must surrender. And no matter how many times we face Him, our surrender must always take place in the present.
