Complete Surrender

Luke 7:36-50

 Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”

Jesus answered him, “Simon, I have something to tell you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

“Two men owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he canceled the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?”

 Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt canceled.”

“You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

* * *

I have sung the words “I surrender all” so many times and with so many melodies that it nearly makes my head spin. I’ve even written those words in my very own songs, more than once.

But do I?

Am I brave enough to surrender my all to the One I call, “God”?

Truth be told, I am often quite a hypocrite. I may sing about it, but I find that I would rather surrender all to the god of my imagination, or surrender all except… anything I’d just rather not surrender. This is an issue of the heart and the will.

 People, I’m talking about SO much more than sin here. Sure, if you’re struggling with something, you’ve got to give it up. Of course there are bad, icky things we do that trip us up. But think about this for a second: are we so arrogant as to assume that if we could just give up [fill in the blanks with the sin of your fancy], we’d be totally ready for God? That we’d even want him once we got Him?

Perhaps I only speak for myself, but let me throw this one out there: the idea of surrendering to God is terrifying. Heck, God can be terrifying. I mean it—the invisible, invincible Being that spoke into creation not just earth but everything in the entire universe? The One who has no beginning, no expiration date, and who is everywhere and sees everything? Sounds rather scary to me. Let’s be real. I’ve never seen God. In fact, the word says no one can or has seen God (John 1:18; Exodus 33:20). So how can I trust God? How do I know he’s not a menace, luring me into his inky, black snare? A villain, perhaps, he is punishing us for not believing him and yet still mysteriously hiding his full revelation from us. Or perhaps he gets some kind of sick pleasure from our troubles because they “teach us” some random lesson he decided we needed to learn. Maybe he puts us through hideous “faith tests” to ruin our lives but somehow glorify himself.

Those are doctrines at work in the world today. They certainly don’t help the church overcome doubt toward the character of God anymore than they produce the belief they so arrogantly proclaim.

So what do we do with our creeping doubts about God? Normally, we hide them—either in masks of pompous religiosity by which we somehow cast down the Devil 5 times an hour or read our Bible 50 times a day, or we veil it with outright “disbelief.”

Yet we still can’t escape him, can we? The irresistible yearning in our hearts, those pesky and rushed thoughts as we marvel at creation, and that gnawing hunger that ever ebbs away at the very fibers of our being. Everything inside of us testifies to God.

Somehow, though, these moments are all too often drowned out by a simple, common, and evil question:

What if God is a let down?

Don’t pretend like the thought hasn’t crossed your mind. It’s at the very heart of what the serpent asked Eve. What if he lets you down? What if he’s not everything he says he is? What if he’s no different than anyone else that has promised you something?

This question provokes a most alarming response: we make a mad dash for the apple, and snarling like wild dogs with food scraps, we bite into it. I’ll do it. I’ll take control of this situation. I’ll worry about this problem. I’ll [fill in the blank]. I cannot bear to be let down by God. I can’t let him hurt me. I don’t know what I’d do if he let me down. I’ll be my own God. Then, I’ll never hurt me. And before you know it, like crazed animals we are hiding from the very God who created us.

* * *

I believe that this point, this moment in our lives, that deep spot inside of us where we must make a decision—that part of us is really what God is after. It is when we teeter on the brink of trusting God that all the marshals of Heaven and Hell stand on full alert, as though the universe itself were leaning on the outcome of our decision.

Honestly, that is why we must re-think our perspective of sin. The New Testament has a pretty simple standpoint: get rid of it, put it off. Not some great list of prayers, and certainly not any idiotic casting out of evil “sin spirits,” as some very falsely suppose. No, if God were after our ability to not sin, I believe he wouldn’t have given us free will. Why on earth would he bother? If serving God, if my faith, is summed up in merely doing whatever God says, then I serve a rather silly Lord. He should have just made wind-up dolls and got on with the job.

Oh, no, friends. God wants so much more than that.

He wants you to want him.

He is after your will.

           

Isn’t that insane? It’s true though, isn’t it? What is the one thing God will not touch on all the earth? Man’s will. In the words of C.S. Lewis, “he cannot ravish; he can only woo” (The Screwtape Letters). God will not force us to believe. We must choose. And choice is an action of the will.

That is why trust is the pivotal moment. God has said some pretty wonderful things about himself, but we must choose in our very will to believe that it is eternally and unchangeably so. And we must make that choice every single day, no matter what. God is not after our emotions, entirely—they come and go. And God is not ultimately after our obedience (for isn’t it also possible to obey someone that you hate?). No, he merely stands before us in scandalous grace, waiting for all eternity for those who would simply and sincerely utter, “Lord Jesus, I choose you!”

For the record, I’m not talking about the pithy vows we think of in marriage when one person decides that more or less, he/she will do for present. If that’s your idea of marriage, save yourself the divorce paperwork and call it a day. No, I’m talking about the absolute and firm declaration of the believer who purposes is in his heart, “My God is forever who he says he is.” And let me assure you, such a believer couldn’t give two dimes about your thoughts on the matter; He will be so set on his God than anything you might say which doesn’t smell and taste of his true Love will be immediately dealt with in the Word.

Brothers and sisters, God ripped his heart out of his chest and handed it to humanity in the Garden of Eden. So insane and illogical is his love! And we, in our own fear, slammed his heart down on the dust, lest he let us down. But rather than destroy us, God gave a nod to the Son, who then stepped forward and put his own heart on the cross, just so we could again be given the choice! Do you see how ridiculous the whole ordeal is? I mean, I can almost understand the Devil’s disgust. It’s outright revolting!

Part of me wants to run screaming into the council of the Trinity, as they stood hatching the plan of salvation before creating the universe.

I imagine myself screaming, “DON’T DO IT, GOD!”

And the trinity would look at me in horror and ask, “Why not?”

“Because us humans will mess it up!” Then the trinity would stare at me, knowing the heart-wrenching question I would barely be able to speak until I simply sobbed, “What if I’m the let down?” (If you’ve never asked that question, I wonder if you’ve ever really pondered your salvation.)

But then I imagine that there would come roaring, deep, and almost musical laughter from them. And I would suddenly notice strange scars on the Son. For, you see, he is the lamb slain from the foundations of the earth (Romans 13:8).

“You’re too late,” he would whisper. “I already chose you.” And he would hold out his heart and ask, “Will you choose me?”

* * *

That is what surrender is. It is not a list of rules, it is not some idiotic faith formula, and it is not miraculous power. It is in quietness and trust, when we look beyond our doubts and see the beaten, pulsating, bruised, and broken heart of God before us. And we simply respond with, “I choose you.”

Isn’t it just irritatingly simple?

We so desperately want formulas, because they allow us to help God keep himself from “letting us down.” We long for some secret knowledge for which we must toil, because then we can banish God to the unattainable world of tomorrow, where we’ll hide him away as we wither in fear. But everything—everything—God ever wanted to be for you, he wants to be right here and right now. Of course you’ll have a lifetime of revelations and ecstatic experiences, but until you can forfeit it all and simply let God be himself, they wouldn’t matter anyway.

 Do we not serve an unchanging God? Then I declare to you today that at this very moment you are in the presence of everything God is, will be, and has ever been. And you don’t get a say over it, either. Your will must bow. For only in that moment can true love for God blossom.

How I wish that we could return to the simplicity of what God has for us! That we would forget, if just for a moment, about our stupid ministry projects and the hustle and bustle of what so many call “church” in this era of unprecedented busywork! How I wish that we would stop obsessing over the devil and contemplating his actions like bratty children waiting to tattle on a sibling! That is nothing more than background music at the fest. All it does is distract from our Guest of Honor.

There is only one thing that silences such a hubbub of clanging gongs. In fact, we have a record of one of the very few people who figured it out. One woman, with one jar of perfume, who simply surrendered—her dignity, her reputation, her doubt, her most valuable possession, and any hope of a future. She surrendered all, not by singing about it, but in simply telling Jesus “I choose you.” And long before she knelt to anoint Jesus’ feet, she had already willed in her soul to surrender. That is how she got the resolve to barge into such a crowded party. In the simple working out of that choice, the most beautiful, and arguably the most powerful, expression of love toward Jesus in all gospels is revealed.

Church, I pray we would see God as God sees himself. I pray that we would search his word night and day like gold miners as we seek greater and greater glimpses of the one we love. I pray that we would give God the one thing He’s after, the one thing he refuses to take until we lay it down. I pray that we would come to a place where we would declare, “God, I want you more than I want the answers.” I pray that as we teeter on the brink of trusting God, we would fall helplessly into the arms of grace. I pray that we would be zealous to guard our hearts against anyone who would try to speak falsely about our God.

Above all, I pray that in the deepest places of our hearts, we would have such a revelation of God’s love that we would finally understand that there really is no other option than to pour everything out to Him and, for once, actually surrender all.

"another fine bit of writing brought to you by yours truly"

Co-heirs with Christ, or "Throw the Hamburger Away"

Have you ever been to a restaurant that has pictures on the menu? I was at a place (that will remain unnamed) recently, and I had the strangest experience. There was this amazing picture of a hamburger. This baby looked like they managed to stuff the whole cow into the burger. The vegetables were clearly grown on the slopes of Mount Olympus, and I would have bet that the bread was baked somewhere nearby. The French fries were the size of small children and soda was streaming out of a cup like only high-fructose corn syrup can. This burger literally looked like it could make dreams come true. Logically, a friend of mine ordered it. 

Much to our horror, this…thing…arrived. A pathetic, squishy little sandwich was staring back up at her from the table. For all we know, someone on staff accidentally stepped on it on the way out of the kitchen. What happened? How could the restaurant present something so false to its customers? What was going on?

But do you know what the craziest thing of all is?

She ate the dumb thing. No protests, no running up to the counter and demanding everything she’d been promised in the picture. No asking for money back. Nothing! She just... quietly... ate it and then left.

Friends, that is what the church does every Sunday. 

***

Romans 8:17: “Now if we are children,

 then we are heirs —heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,

if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that

 we may also share in his glory.”

This verse has literally blown my whole life apart in the last several weeks. I think this may be one of the most important statements of the entire New Testament. Obviously, the message of salvation (the gospel) is of primary importance. But I believe this verse is the heart and goal of salvation.

Read it through again. Heirs of God. Co-heirs with Christ.

Good grief!

We read these incredible verses about a passionate and romantic rescue from sin by the God who has pursued us in His insatiable love since before the foundations of the earth, who destined us to be his very Bride, who is the personification of grace and the source of all power. For most of us, these are all things we profess to believe!

...and yet, somehow, we have the audacity to sit quietly in pews wondering if maybe, just maybe, the old guy in the sky really cares about helping us out at work. We have the audacity to think that because we sing extra pretty, maybe his pride will be satiated for a while and he’ll leave us alone. We have the audacity to profess a Bible full of miraculous works and at the same time live our lives like God isn’t moving.

Based on what we see in so many “churches” week in and week out, would you consider it worth it to give up your child?

I wouldn’t give up my cat. I’m not kidding.

Well, church, I’ve got news for you. According to the verse we just read in Romans 8, you’re an heir. I believe the Holy Spirit has a message for you. And he sent me on assignment to write it down.

Congratulations, dear reader.

There has been a death in your family.

You were included in the will.

Your inheritance includes, but is not limited to:

-righteousness before God. (Philippians 3:8-10)

-all spiritual blessings in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:3)

-everything you need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1)

-the indwelling of the Almighty (John 14:20)

-divine provision of all earthly needs (Matthew 6)

-accompanying signs of your belief including, but not limited to: new tongues, healing the   sick, casting out demons (Mark 16:7)

Actually, there’s a whole lot more to the will. You see, the will is rather long. Some call it the “Bible”.

Brothers and sisters, where did we lose our way? I am serious. If I read in the pages of my Bible that I we are co-heirs with Christ, than the shivering and anemic body we call “the church” is a heresy, at best. We proclaim a God who gives us peace and we live lives of anxiety. We proclaim a God who gives us wisdom and yet we would rather ask our financial adviser than him. We proclaim forgiveness of sins and then slander other brothers and sisters on the basis of their sins. We proclaim righteousness and act like on the Cross were not enough–as though somehow, it hadn’t totally rid of us of sin; as though we weren’t really welcome to come “boldly before the throne.” And what is most heartbreaking to me (and, I think, to God) we proclaim the God of love but live our lives as though he did not care about us. How can we call ourselves children of God if won’t let him be our Father? Whatever happened to the glorious gathering of the saints, the beauty of a community of people that come together not because it’s Sunday but because they cannot wait to have a party at Dad’s house?

Seriously!

 

We pray like He’s bored and needs us to keep talking in order to not fall asleep. We sing like He’s some kind of ego-maniac that needs us to exalt Him in order to not feel self-conscious. We preach as though He were not wise or eloquent enough to speak for Himself. (How many sermons do we hear, week after week, trying to excuse his Word and delving into what “the Hebrew really means” in order to explain why you’ll never understand your Bible without a Master’s degree?)  We gather “in His Name” but spend our time largely unaware of His presence. And we treat those few brave souls who claim to have heard from Him like they belong in a room with padded walls. We confuse the Holy Spirit for Casper–we cry out for his presence and then promptly call Ghost Busters when he makes Himself known to us.

I’m starting to feel like a broken record here...

Make up your mind, church.

Either God loves you or He doesn’t.

Either His salvation was enough or it isn’t.

Either you have been set free or you haven’t.

Either the Bible is the truth or it isn’t.

Either God’s promises are true or they aren’t.

You cannot live in an in-between world. That is why God describes Himself as an “all-consuming fire.” He gives you absolutely everything. And believe me, He expects everything in return. 

That is precisely what “joint heir” or “co-heir” means.

God used legal terminology in our verse from Romans 8 for a reason. You see, under the law, whenever there was a situation of a “joint heir,” a very specific legal document had to be drafted. It was the inheritance, and it required two parties to put their mark upon it. Until both heirs’ marks were present, neither could receive his portion. (Don’t believe me? Dude, even Spurgeon preached this one. Google it.)

Do you grasp the significance here?

Unless you stand up and accept your rights as an heir–put your mark on the line–Christ himself cannot take his inheritance. You get it all or nothing, and so does he. The scandal! The unthinkable degradation of deity! That God would lay his riches aside until we were willing to partner with Him! It’s disgusting! Nauseating! What kind of a God have we?

Why, God? Why? Why would you give up your son for the church? WHY? 

I would like to submit something to you. Take it as you like it:

God did not give up His one and only Son, his dearly beloved, so that you and I could get together once a week, clap our hands, and go home. God gave up his son so that he could dive headfirst into the lake of fire and pull us out. He came to seek and to save us, who were lost. Grace grabbed a hold of us and dragged us, kicking and screaming, out of our old lives. We fought him–oh, how many of us are honest enough to admit that we used to like sinning?! But still he held us. We kicked and bit like wild animals, but still he held us. Then, in a blinding moment, we were brought before the judgment seat to receive sentencing. All of our sins were listed before us and we realized we were trapped. Judgment was upon us. Then, something unexpected happened. The Son stood up before his father and accepted our punishment. We watched as he was the one dragged back to the lake of fire to take our place. And as we sat there confused and utterly dumfounded, we heard the gasps of angels who could not understand what was happening, either. God? Crucified? For... them? 

Because, you see, a will is not legally binding until its author has died.

     

So, based on the finished work of Christ, the Will of God from before the foundations of the earth is now legally binding in your life—both on heaven and earth, for there is nowhere where God’s Word is not the final one. God paid for the promises of the Bible with his own blood. His crazy, passionate, and illogical love for you is written all over every single page. God doesn’t want you to just be his slave–he wants you to be his heir. That’s how we got the family name–CHRISTians. That’s how we can boldly say that we are “hidden in Christ.” 

God gave up his son so that you could be his Bride. So that you could personally and intimately know him. So that you could let him show off in your life–in miracles, in provision, in peace, in the fruits of the Spirit, in the love he would shower upon you. And, if I may be so bold, the kind of halfhearted Christianity at work in most “churches” is more of a slap in the face to the love of the Father than we really understand. Think about it this way: if he promised you peace, your anxiety and stress and worry is just another way of saying He’s a liar.  

                                                                          

Church, I dare you.

I dare you to devour every page of your Bible as if it were your very own inheritance.

I dare you to believe that God told the truth when he said he loved you.

I dare you to go through every day as if church—the “called out ones”—was your identity, 

not an address.

I dare you to stop sniveling on the ground in front of the throne and take your rightful place alongside Christ.

I dare you to stop maligning the finished work of Christ by claiming the identity of a “sinner” when God’s word says we were made righteous in Christ.

I dare you to be everything that God says you are.

I dare us all to take back “church” and make the gathering of the saints something worth dying for.

But most importantly, I dare you to do something really scary: let God loose. Let him prove his promises to you. Let him keep his Word to you. Let him answer for himself. In his time. In his way.

***

It’s about time we took the nasty, squishy hamburgers we’ve been calling “church” and threw them in the garbage can, anyway.