I remember standing before God in 2004, self-righteous and angry, ready to let Him have it. I was tired of an empty Christianity, tired of watching everyone around me make it up as they went along. Everything was about controlled behavior, and the church was judging people based on how well they could look good outwardly. For some reason, I could see so clearly that no one in the church—without exception—looked like the Christianity I saw through the pages of the Bible.
Not knowing better, I attributed it to God leaving us on earth to fend for ourselves. In my mind, it wasn’t the people’s fault but God’s fault that Christianity was so empty and void of the Spirit’s power.
I was talking to God out of both sides of my mouth, thinking I knew what I was talking about. In my arrogance, I judged God and pronounced sentence without ever truly speaking with Him.
Suddenly, I heard a voice outside of myself. I looked around, and the voice said a second time: “Surrender to me then.”
Imagine a bully beating up on someone who couldn’t defend themselves, and then someone came along and knocked the wind out of the bully—just like that, the bully retreated. That was me when I heard those words. Not only did I hear them twice, but there was variation. The first time the voice said, “Surrender to me,” I remained quiet and looked around. I could see no one. The voice said again, “Surrender to me, then”—the tone was different. It was like saying, “Put your money where your mouth is. If you think I am that powerless, dare to surrender.”
I wrote extensively about my surrender in the book To The Church of Thyatira: Perseverance and Purity in a Challenging World. Yes, I would be the first to tell you that this book is not easy to read as long as you are comfortable traveling through the wide gate. It is not easy to read if your whole idea of Christianity is all about how God loves you and the rest of the Bible is unimportant. But God told me to trust Him in this.
Why is it that when I talked about surrender, even my mentors—pillars of such a large church—became stumbling blocks to me? The problem is that we live this life with so many assumptions. We learn to feel comfortable with them, finding solace in knowing we can get by without ever surrendering to God.
The Fear of Surrender
One reason I stopped talking when I heard God’s voice telling me to surrender was because right there, I knew I was being asked something that was not part of the deal. It is one thing to be told that if I believe, confess with my mouth, and get baptized, I am saved. But it is another thing entirely to be asked to surrender. I still remember vividly the fear in my heart. While I knew nothing about surrender, and for years I was in the church, no one spoke to me about it and no sermons were preached on the subject.
Surrender feels like a spiritual death because, in many ways, it is. It feels like someone is asking you to willfully give control of your life to someone else—which seems ridiculous for a human being. The brain equates loss of control with loss of safety. What we don’t realize is that as human beings, regardless of our rank, our status in the world, or how rich we are, every single one of us is living with an illusion of control that serves as our primary survival mechanism, even when we play God.
At first, the idea of surrendering to God feels like giving in to the unknown. We mistake our frantic “doing” for “securing,” believing that if we stop managing every variable, our lives will simply disintegrate. This makes surrender feel like an irresponsible abdication of duty rather than a shift into a deeper reality.
For the Christian, this struggle is often intensified by a layer of spiritual guilt. Many believers feel a deep internal conflict: they know they are called to “trust in the Lord with all their heart,” yet they feel the physiological fear of the unknown just like everyone else. This creates a sense of vulnerability that feels like a lack of faith. Consequently, they may avoid true surrender by substituting it with “pious striving”—praying more fervently not to submit to God’s will, but to convince God to align with theirs. They fear that if they truly let go, God might allow the very outcome they dread, or that they will be left “exposed” without the defenses they’ve spent a lifetime building.
What Surrender Unlocks
But surrender is the first step to having the Holy Spirit released to work wildly in us and do His spiritual work. Surrender is the only way to have the eyes of our heart opened so we can see the spiritual inheritance God has for us. Surrender is the only way faith becomes so tangible that we see the unseen. Surrender is the only way we can abide in Him. Surrender is everything.
When I looked to find where in the Bible God ever asked us to surrender, I barely found two verses to help me a tiny bit. With all my heart, I could not find anything that taught the importance of surrender in the life of a Christian. During that time, there was not much available on the internet about the deep subjects of God, the Puritans, and everything else we now have at our fingertips.
Imagine my surprise after my surrender to God when I found out that not only does God call us to surrender willfully, but there is more than one-time surrender, which is different from living a yielded life. It is right there, illustrated for us in the life of Abraham.
Only after I surrendered was I able to discover that not only does God call us to surrender willfully, but the biggest shock to my system was finding out that the whole Bible is about a surrendered life—otherwise, it is impossible to live it out. Another thing that made me say, “Oh my goodness”—all this time I had read the Bible verse where God said eternal life is knowing God, and I assumed because I called myself a Christian, well, it meant I had eternal life. I never differentiated what knowing God truly meant.
The Culture Shock of Surrender
Surrender is like spending your life doing something so foolish that no one ever told you how ridiculous you were, and suddenly you find out you’ve been so absurd that everyone was making fun of you behind your back. Or it is like finding out you’ve been walking around talking to everyone, never realizing your clothing was exposed inappropriately and no one told you.
Surrender is like what we call culture shock for immigrants. It is a different world—to move from a Christianity in our minds, our wills, our own opinions and knowledge, to a spiritual world that was all around us, yet we had no idea it was there all this time. It is a world where we become like Jacob, saying repeatedly those words in Genesis 28:16: “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.'”
In surrender, a portal in heaven is opened to us, and we had no idea we were allowed to view God’s realm while we are on earth. Until we learn to surrender, some books with deep teachings will get on our nerves.
Once I had gone through the process where I had to make more than one surrender to God, I could not believe I was fighting Him so much at the beginning. I realized how ridiculous I was. In reality, surrender is the ultimate act of personal decision to say, “You died for me, so You deserve that I give You my will.” Our acts of surrender say ” I trust You, I have faith in You”
How can we withhold ourselves when we are telling Him that we want Him to die for us on the cross, but don’t ask for anything from us?
Obedience, Surrender and Abiding are not negotiable.
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