Another year is coming to a close. With it is another opportunity for us to make New Year’s Resolutions, some we keep and some we don’t. One resolution people seem to make is to “surrender” more of their life to God.

Have you thought about what surrender really means? When I think of the word “surrender,” I think of the song “I Surrender All.”

“All to Jesus, I surrender, all to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live. All to Jesus I surrender, humbly at His feet I bow, worldly pleasures all forsaken, take me, Jesus, take me now. All to Jesus I surrender, make me, Savior, wholly Thine; may Thy Holy Spirit fill me, may I know Thy pow’r divine. All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee; fill me with Thy love and power, let Thy blessing fall on me. All to Jesus I surrender, now I feel the sacred flame. Oh the joy of full salvation! Glory, glory to His name! I surrender all, I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.” [1]

Recently a friend was sharing this story. He had asked another man what surrender really means. This other man said to him, “Do you have a check book? Take it out and sign a check.” My friend did so. Then the man said, “Now give it to me.” As most of us would do, he held on to the check. How could he have given this man a signed blank check. Then the man said, “When you can give me that check, then you will know what complete surrender is.”

Let’s look at the definition of surrender [2] :

1. To relinquish possession or control of to another because of demand or compulsion. 2. To give up in favor of another. 3. To give up or give back (something that has been granted). 4. To give up or abandon.

In the sense of surrendering our life to God and using the first definition, to relinquish possession or control of, surrender means to totally give up your life and everything you own – to give Him total control over everything that happens. As the song stated above, “ALL to Him I FREELY give.” That’s not an easy thing to do.

All you have to do is give your life to God and trust Him. “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Romans 10:9-10 NIV

The act of surrendering to Jesus as Lord is not just words we repeat. Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 7:21 NIV. Surrendering to Jesus as Lord is giving Him total control of our life.

Giving Him control of your life is like driving down the road with another person. If you are driving you are in control. But when you realize you don’t know where you are going and give the other person the “wheel to drive” then the other person is in control and you accept the route that person chooses.

To surrender our lives to God is to abandon all that we know and learn to trust in Him. If we surrender our life to God then we would be giving back to him something he already gave to us. Everything we have has come from Him. He provides for our finances, our shelter, our food. He provides for our health and our well-being. 2000 years ago He even provided us His Son, Jesus, as a sacrifice for our sins.

Sometimes we go through things in life that don’t seem fair. They might even seem as if God is “out to get us” or “God is mad at us.” Those things happen mostly for us to learn something. In the times of severe financial crisis or loss of a job we learn to trust him more to provide our every day needs. Maybe He has a better job for you somewhere else. In times of health problems we learn to trust him more for healing. Maybe you are supposed to “slow down” a bit.

Some of you reading this might say, “I’ve already given my life to God.” But have you surrendered it to Him? Have you really GIVEN it to Him? Could you write God a “blank check” on your life?

Whether you have given your life to God before or have never done it at all, you can surrender your whole life to Him right now.

You can say a simple prayer like this one:

“Father, I know that I have done things that are not right – I know I have sinned. I believe that Your Son, Jesus, came to die on the cross as the sacrifice for my sins. Please forgive me for the things I have done wrong. Come into my life and be the Lord of it. Help me to be the kind of person You want me to be.

Lord I surrender my whole life to You. I give You control to do things the way You want to. Help me not to get in the way of Your plans. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

[1] © Public Domain, Judson W. VanDeVenter and Winfield S. Weeden
[2] ©1994, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition by Houghton Mifflin Company.