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.

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