You have to die

You have to die! ~ Bethany Turner

What are you afraid of? I’m not talking about fear of the dark or the next phone bill. Is there fear between you and God? Are you afraid of giving over every last shred of your life to Him? Is there anything that you are holding back, afraid to let go of?

Let me ask you another question, do you have any frustration or insecurity in you Christian walk?
Do you keep trying, but have that sinking feeling inside that you are still missing the mark?

These are feelings I have struggled with. Of course we should not depend on feelings, but deep down I knew what my heart was telling me was true, not just an emotion.

There is a heavenly spot in my experience where for an extended period I did not struggle with
these, but felt complete freedom. It was after I read a painfully insightful paper on surrender. I want to share with you, from my heart, what I have learned about surrender.

‘Surrender’ is a part of Christian vocabulary that we are all familiar with. And we often sing,

“All to Jesus I surrender
All to Him I freely give...”

But it is time we considered its meaning.

Surrender does not come naturally, because we have an innate and desperate need to be in control. We may even schedule God into our lives. We set aside time to spend with Him, then hurry on to the next item on our to-do list. We want to manage ourselves. We are happy to include the Saviour in our plans, but we are not willing to give them over to Him. And we may be cherishing that hint of fear - “what if He requires me to do something I really don’t want to do?” “What if He takes something from me that I really love? I can’t fully let go of the reins.”

I have a dear friend, who has struggled on for years, feeling like a failure. He wants to get married, but the years have accumulated without love. He yearns for financial success, but the jobs just come and go. Over the years, I have urged him to find peace in Christ, and he has really tried. He has faithfully set aside time for devotions, attended church and shared his faith. But in a haunting conversation I had with him several months ago, he admitted that he was terrified of letting go and giving full control of his life to God.

What could be so frightening about giving over the reins to God? Why do we hold back? Because real surrender is so absolute, the only thing it is comparable to is death. And we don't want to die!

Jesus said, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Matthew 16:24
Now, in Christ's time, if you saw someone carrying a cross, what did you know? That they were going to die!

In Luke 14 Jesus says it even more forcefully. “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple... So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14: 26, 27, 33

Here is pictured the depths of this death. It is obviously not a physical death, but it is as complete. It severs us from everything that we hold dear in life - the sweet ties of family, all that we have and our own selves, no less.

Now there is one short phrase in common between these verses. Jesus says here that without this “death”– you “cannot be my disciple.” It is the only way.

My friend had tried so hard to be a Christian, yet he had no peace. Why? He was no disciple of the Saviour. What about you?

Surely you are a true disciple! You have given your heart to God and changed the direction of your life. You have faithfully attended church and paid your tithe. You have experienced the joy that comes from reading His word and praying to Him. You may have even given up ‘much’ in your desire to serve Him fully - but unless you have laid your all, and yourself with it, on the sacrificial altar you are not a true disciple.

Partial surrender is no surrender at all. It is saying to God, “I will choose what You can have—I am still in control!” Not until there is a 100% surrender, can God begin to do anything meaningful.

There are many Christians from the pages of history of whom we stand in awe. We feel we could never be so pure, daring or holy as they. But their secret was not in any inherent goodness.

To one who asked George Mueller the secret of his service, he replied: “There was a day when I died,” and, as he spoke, he bent lower, until he almost touched the floor. Then he continued, “Died to George Mueller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame even of my brethren or friends; and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God.”

Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, once said: “We know how the Lord Jesus became fruitful—not by bearing His cross merely, but by dying on it. Do we know much fellowship with Him in this? There are not two Christs–an easy-going one for easy-going Christians, and a suffering, toiling one for exceptional believers. There is only one Christ.”

Death is the gateway to life. It is not the end of it all—it is a beginning. When you surrender yourself entirely to God and fall, all broken upon Jesus, you will be rewarded by a victory, the joy of which, you have never yet realized. You will find freedom like you have never before known. This is what it means to be under grace, rather than law. Once you let Him fully take over, you no longer have to struggle and work to obey God – it is now He that works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.

I will never forget the immense relief I felt when I first experienced this. I no longer needed to worry about “doing the right things.” Instead of planning out my day, with a portion set aside for God, I was turning to Him at each step, asking what He wanted me to do. Sin is not an issue when self is dead!

But the struggle does not end even now. Surrender is the beginning in the path of discipleship. The death position, once taken, must be learned. The life of the Crucified must be received moment by moment. Daily, we will find a cross. Providential circumstances will bring us up against choices that ‘cross’ self. These will, if we are true disciples, become the instruments of death to our own wills. It may be some small trifle of daily routine; a crossing of personal preference, accumulation of duties or unwanted interruptions. Yesterday these things annoyed you. But today, you take them up, and let them be the occasion of new disgrace and deeper death for that old self-spirit.

There are things you are afraid of, maybe even dread. You have cried, “Anything but that, Lord.” And now it is staring you in the face. To obey God will now bring pain or disgrace. But in the divine wisdom it will apply Calvary more deeply to self. So take it up, stretch your hands out upon it, and there make a fresh break with self. When Christ shouldered His cross, He went forth to lay down His life. That is what you will do as His follower. He means you to embrace this new test as His instrument of your own undoing. There you unlearn self and learn Christ. That circumstance, when embraced, is your “cross.”

Dear friends, I urge you to take this step. Please don't withhold yourselves from God. The moment you surrender yourselves wholly to him, in simple faith, Jesus accepts you, and encircles you in his arms of love. Now you may soon find that self cannot, will not crucify self. Then it is that you need to just cry out to God with David, “bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar!” Psalms 118:27. Give Him your will, allow Him the right to make your decisions. Don’t make a single reserve, or compromise. Know what it is to be free in Christ! He will not disappoint you!