We used to sing an old hymn, complete in its simplicity: “I surrender all, I surrender all, all to Jesus I surrender; I surrender all.” Because He is good in every essential, we can willingly surrender and then receive of His fullness. When we surrender our old perception of reality, the new, holy and whole can come flooding in. We are renewed in his peace. Surrender is the precursor to renewal (Rom. 12:2), our whole selves offered to the One who comes to inhabit us by His Spirit and change us on the inside.
Sometimes during my morning’s quiet devotion time, by faith, I enter the throne-room of grace and with the “eyes of my heart” envision an altar there. Then, as an act of worship I present myself there as a “living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God” (Rom. 12:1). I surrender all that I am and know, desire and hold dear, to the One who is able to hold all these things in order. And I know His goodness covers all. By surrender, I am then in an open posture of receptivity to His will, His way and His renewal.
Jacques Philippe (Searching for and Maintaining Peace) wrote of surrender: “In order for abandonment to be authentic….it must be total. We must put everything, without exception, into the hands of God, not seeking any longer to manage or ‘to save’ ourselves by our own measure: not in the material domain, nor the emotional, nor the spiritual. We cannot divide human existence into various sectors: certain sectors where it would be legitimate to surrender to God and others…we manage exclusively on our own. All reality that we have not surrendered to God…will continue to make us uneasy. The measure of our interior peace will be that of our abandonment.”
By continual surrender, we can develop this interior peace, a quiet heart. This isn’t a passive kind of acceptance but a very real and joyful waiting on the Lord as we anticipate His goodness. Elizabeth Elliot wrote: “A willing acceptance of all that God assigns and a glad surrender of all that I am and have constitute the key to receiving the gift of a quiet heart.” (Keep a Quiet Heart)
