Believe: TOTAL SURRENDER

My basketball team in Jr. High would start each game yelling in unison “TPQACS Tigers.” Each letter stood for a phrase that was intended to be of value to our team. I won’t go over each letter – but I still could. I will just give you the Q – “Quitters never win, and winners never quit.” Obviously, this was to remind us to give our all to the very end. Another way of saying this was – Don’t ever surrender!
 
I strongly believe that this is an important element of living life with perseverance and tenacity. This perspective develops mental toughness and character not only on the basketball court but in life. The Bible calls for us to not live our lives as “quitters”, so what does it mean when it tells us that we are called to completely surrender our lives?

• This Scriptural truth is more of a faith issue than a perseverance issue.
• The Biblical invitation is more about trust than it is about tenacity.
• This call is to see God’s truth and love instead of chasing personal control and power.

 
The Total Surrender of Scripture is simply taking God at His Word. It is believing that God knows best and loves us perfectly even when life is filled with difficulties or sorrows. It is a faith that believes Jesus is the answer when we struggle to even articulate the question. This is the perspective that brings freedom to us when we are tempted to enter the prison of “self-worship.”
 
All through the pages of the Bible we see the confrontation between a loving, gracious, merciful God and a rebellious humanity. God’s patience in the face of our tendency toward creating lives that don’t include our Creator is mind-boggling. He is the one with all the power and truth, yet we chase after those things at the same time we run from their very source – GOD Himself.
 
This week I am preparing another funeral message where I will once again attempt to remind those in attendance that we don’t possess the answers on our own. Left on our own – we die! Now that can be depressing if we believe that this world and our few years on it is all that there is. But there is another way – Total Surrender. What I mean by that is to place our hope in God’s ways. It is trusting Jesus to forgive me, to give me what I need for today and what I will need on the day when I breathe my final breath. It is a confidence that Jesus died for me and since He did that my death has been conquered.
My death has become a doorway to my eternal home in the family of God.
 
The writer of Proverbs 3 described surrender with words that guide our hearts and minds as we live out each day the Lord gives us.
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
 
In Christ,
Pastor Nick