A Christian's White Flag of Surrender

Surrender.  One word, different meanings. In wartime, a party’s surrender is an admission of defeat by its enemy.  But for a Christian, surrender to the will of God is the path to victory.

How does this work? I’ll share a personal example, but first we’ll start with Job - that guy from the Old Testament that loves and walks with God and was blessed with great wealth and a big family.  But then, virtually all at once, all of that is taken away and Job is left with almost nothing (just his life and his wife - and not that these are insignificant!, but, you know, he did just lose all ten children, all his wealth and his health) but time to ponder why all this suffering happened to him.

Job does something amazing right from the start, just after all the tragedy: he declares that God is worthy to be praised. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: may the name of the Lord be praised.” (Job 1:20)

But that declaration of faith doesn’t mean that Job was immune to pain and suffering -- not at all! On the contrary, Job is painfully honest about his grief and confusion in the midst of tragedy and says things like this (my paraphrase):

* If this is how my life would end up, why was I even born? (see Job 3:11-13)

* This is my worst nightmare. (see Job 3:25-26)

* God, why did You allow this? I’m so confused, but You are God and the only one I can turn to.  (see Job 13:15, 23-24)

* It feels like God is against me. I’ve served Him all these years, yet He’s turned His back on me. (see Job 19:7-11, 30:16-23))

* How come everyone else’s life is chugging along smoothly while I have heaps of trouble? Why me? (see Job 21:7-18)

Job is saying, “I love God and have sought to honor Him. I don’t understand what’s going on here!” If you’ve walked through suffering, this probably resonates. We love Job’s honesty because we’ve been there too! These are real thoughts and emotions in troublesome times.  They don’t nullify our faith, but they do challenge it.

In a recent season of trials, my prayers reflected a similar confusion:  “Lord, I have loved You and walked with You. I have sought to honor You.  I have obeyed You in really hard places. And now this?”  

God doesn’t leave Job hanging - he "answer[s] Job from the whirlwind” (Job 38:1) - which is so appropriate, by the way, since I bet Job’s thoughts and emotions sure felt like a whirlwind at this point! Job 38-41 records God reminding Job of all the amazing things He has done and still does that exceed our ability to comprehend: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? . . . Are you as strong as God?” (Job 38:4, 12; 40:9). In essence, God is saying, “Job, there are so many things about Me that surpass your ability to comprehend or control. Why are you questioning my sovereignty?”

God is telling Job that His ways are higher than ours (see Isaiah 55:8-9) and we don’t/won’t always understand. But that’s okay because sometimes we don’t need to understand, we only need to trust.

Wow, I get this....when I cried to God, “why did it have to be this way?” His immediate response was, “Otherwise you would not have learned to trust Me.”  Yes, His ways are higher. His goal was not my comfort but my faith.

Job’s response to God’s explanation is surrender. “You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my [God’s] wisdom with such ignorance?’ It is I [Job] - and I was talking about things I knew nothing about, things far too wonderful for me. . . . I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance.” (Job 42:3, 6) Job was saying, “You’re right, God.  I can’t rationalize what has happened because my own thinking is so limited compared to Yours. You do things more magnificent than I can even imagine. I still don’t get it, but I am choosing to surrender to Your will even when I don’t understand it.”

Surrender is not defeat.  It is trust. Bold, reckless trust in God as we throw all our hope onto Him.

By God’s grace, I got to this point too.  I saw that His chiefest goal for me was not my comfort but my heart, and He would do whatever it took to draw my heart into closer communion with Him -- even if it took hardship.  On my knees and through tears, I whispered some scary words, “Do what You have to do. Take it all if You have to.”

But instead of those words being met with a sense of foreboding, they were met with a stronger feeling that, no matter what, my life was firmly held in the loving arms of my Heavenly Father.  

And then, a marvelous sense of freedom came. Freedom from the burden of trying to figure out why things had gone wrong and how to fix it. Not freedom from pain or grief (because nothing had changed), but freedom to declare God’s goodness no matter what life looks like. Freedom to not have my faith bound by circumstances but to instead keep on believing, keep on trusting that He is faithful, true, merciful, loving.  “Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips will praise You.” (Psalm 63:3).

A beautiful spirit of worship was released in our home - starting with me, and pouring over to the others. I leapt and sang and rejoiced with a full heart (remember, the circumstances had not changed!). Our oldest toddler was belting out praise and even the youngest, not yet verbal, was doing laps around the living room with both arms raised, fingers pointing heavenward.

The joy and freedom and peace that was poured out into me was so much stronger than the pain and grief I felt - it was supernatural. “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)

As I look back over my years of walking with Christ, I can honestly say that my most precious moments with God are not the times when He gave the answer to prayer I’d hoped for or when I’d received the clarity of His guidance -- rather, they were when I was able to sing, “ALL to Jesus I surrender” and really mean it.  And I promise you - those moments were always in the messy seasons of life.

Oh friends . . . He is good!

But let us now turn back to Job, and see how his story ends.

After all the suffering, God heaped blessings upon Job again: “the Lord restored his fortunes. In fact, the Lord gave him twice as much as before!” (Job 42:10)  His brothers, sisters and friends came to comfort and console him, then to feast with him. He even had ten more children. (Job 42:11, 13) “So the Lord blessed Job in the second half of his life even more than in the beginning.” (Job 42:12) Wow! We don’t know from the beginning what God will do in the end, but we do know that He is always trustworthy. “You have allowed me to suffer much hardship, but you will restore me to life again and lift me up from the depths of the earth.  You will restore me to even greater honor and comfort me once again.” Psalm 71:20-21

There are so many ways that God blessed Job, but my guess is that the biggest blessing of all was Job’s increased intimacy with the God he loved.  As Job puts it, “I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.” (Job 42:5)

And those of us who have walked with the Lord, we know - there really is nothing better than that.