Absolute surrender–let me tell you where I got those words. I used
them myself often, and you have heard them numberless times. But in
Scotland once I was in a company where we were talking about the
condition of Christ’s Church, and what the great need of the Church and
of believers is; and there was in our company a godly worker who has
much to do in training workers, and I asked him what he would say was
the great need of the Church, and the message that ought to be
preached. He answered very quietly and simply and determinedly:
“Absolute surrender to God is the one thing.”
The words struck me as never before. And that man began to tell how, in
the workers with whom he had to deal, he finds that if they are sound
on that point, even though they be backward, they are willing to be
taught and helped, and they always improve; whereas others who are not
sound there very often go back and leave the work. The condition for
obtaining God’s full blessing is absolute surrender to Him.
And now, I desire by God’s grace to give to you this message–that your
God in Heaven answers the prayers which you have offered for blessing
on yourselves and for blessing on those around you by this one demand:
Are you willing to surrender yourselves absolutely into His hands? What
is our answer to be? God knows there are hundreds of hearts who have
said it, and there are hundreds more who long to say it but hardly dare
to do so. And there are hearts who have said it, but who have yet
miserably failed, and who feel themselves condemned because they did
not find the secret of the power to live that life. May God have a word
for all!
Let me say, first of all, that God claims it from us.
God Expects Your Surrender
Yes, it has its foundation in the very nature of God. God cannot do
otherwise. Who is God? He is the Fountain of life, the only Source of
existence and power and goodness, and throughout the universe there is
nothing good but what God works. God has created the sun, and the moon,
and the stars, and the flowers, and the trees, and the grass; and are
they not all absolutely surrendered to God? Do they not allow God to
work in them just what He pleases? When God clothes the lily with its
beauty, is it not yielded up, surrendered, given over to God as He
works in its beauty? And God’s redeemed children, oh, can you think
that God can work His work if there is only half or a part of them
surrendered? God cannot do it. God is life, and love, and blessing, and
power, and infinite beauty, and God delights to communicate Himself to
every child who is prepared to receive Him; but ah! this one lack of
absolute surrender is just the thing that hinders God. And now He
comes, and as God, He claims it.
You know in daily life what absolute surrender is. You know that
everything has to be given up to its special, definite object and
service. I have a pen in my pocket, and that pen is absolutely
surrendered to the one work of writing, and that pen must be absolutely
surrendered to my hand if I am to write properly with it. If another
holds it partly, I cannot write properly. This coat is absolutely given
up to me to cover my body. This building is entirely given up to
religious services. And now, do you expect that in your immortal being,
in the divine nature that you have received by regeneration, God can
work His work, every day and every hour, unless you are entirely given
up to Him? God cannot. The Temple of Solomon was absolutely surrendered
to God when it was dedicated to Him. And every one of us is a temple of
God, in which God will dwell and work mightily on one
condition–absolute surrender to Him. God claims it, God is worthy of
it, and without it God cannot work His blessed work in us.
God not only claims it, but God will work it Himself.
God Accomplishes Your Surrender
I am sure there is many a heart that says: “Ah, but that absolute
surrender implies so much!” Someone says: “Oh, I have passed through so
much trial and suffering, and there is so much of the self-life still
remaining, and I dare not face the entire giving of it up, because I
know it will cause so much trouble and agony.”
Alas! alas! that God’s children have such thoughts of Him, such cruel
thoughts. Oh, I come to you with a message, fearful and anxious one.
God does not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, or
by the power of your will; God is willing to work it in you. Do we not
read: “It is God that worketh in us, both to will and to do of his good
pleasure” (Phil. 2:13)? And that is what we should seek for–to go on
our faces before God, until our hearts learn to believe that the
everlasting God Himself will come in to turn out what is wrong, to
conquer what is evil, and to work what is well-pleasing in His blessed
sight. God Himself will work it in you.
The Rev. Andrew Murray: Sermon, Total Surrender.