When I Surrender

My first real job—if you don’t count a few summer stints in food service—was leading worship in a local church. My church needed a worship leader, and I was naïve enough to think that my brand-new music degree and the four guitar chords I knew might qualify me. I mean, I loved the Lord and I knew music—I could play and sing. Surely that was enough, right?

It took God no time at all to show me how unprepared I was to truly worship Him, much less to help anyone else do likewise.

Four months into the job, when Martin became ill, I struggled to stand before a congregation of people singing songs of praise to God. How in the world could I lift my voice in joy when our lives seemed to be falling apart? How could I proclaim His faithfulness when my own faith was taking such an awful pounding?

During this season of personal wrestling, my whole concept of worship began to change. I discovered that God wasn’t offended if I couldn’t “feel it” on a Sunday morning. Instead of worship as a warm and fuzzy, emotional experience, I began to see it as a deeper, conscious choice to praise my always-worthy God.

But getting there wasn’t easy.

I began to search the Scriptures for a solid definition of worship, something I could hang my hat on when my feelings didn’t automatically inspire me to praise.

It was in the book of Romans that I finally found the answer I was looking for.

When we surrender ourselves to God, we worship Him. Surrendering doesn’t lead us into worship; our surrender is our worship.

The first eleven chapters of Romans contain what many theologians agree is the most comprehensive exposition of grace found anywhere in the Bible. After these eleven chapters full of rich truth, it’s as if Paul took a deep breath and answered the obvious question now hanging in the air: Considering all that Christ has done for us—making us right with God by His atoning death, freeing us from the penalty and power of sin, lavishing us with His grace—how should we respond?

I wonder if his answer surprised them. It surprised me.

“Therefore,” he wrote, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1, ESV). In other words, “Surrender your life, body and soul, to God. Give yourself up!”

Paul’s readers would have understood the concept of sacrifice. He wrote to the first-century house churches in Rome, made up of Jewish and Roman converts to Christianity. Both groups were familiar with the practice of offering sacrifices in worship—Jewish or pagan—and both would also be reminded of Jesus’ sacrifice on their behalf.

One key word in Paul’s instruction showed me that he wasn’t talking about a martyr’s sacrifice: living. He wasn’t suggesting that followers of Jesus should all die for their faith; he was asking them all to live for it—with lives of sacrifice that were holy and acceptable to God. This kind of surrendered life, he said, is our true and proper response. Worship is a lived experience.

I’ve heard worship described through the years in so many ways, as an hour-long service you attend on Sunday morning, or a genre of music played on your local Christian radio station. But I’d never heard it described, like Paul did, as a full-on, lifelong surrender.

When we surrender ourselves to God, we worship Him. Surrendering doesn’t lead us into worship; our surrender is our worship.

That seemed so profoundly simple!

My first response was relief. In Paul’s worship paradigm, surrender outranks emotion. Of course, worship of God engages our emotions, but for Paul emotion wasn’t the main requirement. Surrender was. The proper response of people who have been given everything is to present their very lives to the One who has given them everything. This is our reasonable act of worship.

My second response was a feeling of apprehension. Hold on now—a holy and blameless sacrifice? Me? Anyone who has ever met me knows I wouldn’t qualify for that. And Paul himself already said that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. I can’t present myself as a holy and blameless sacrifice on the basis of my track record, but I can present myself to God as holy and blameless based on His mercy!

We don’t surrender our lives to God to gain His favor. We offer ourselves to Him in response to the favor He’s already freely shown us because of the saving work of Jesus!

God does not expect perfection from His children. What a relief that is! When He looks at each one of us, He doesn’t see the skeletons in our closet, our self-centeredness gone rogue, our past failures, or even our potential for future failure. Before He sees anything else, He sees in us the righteousness of Jesus. We don’t surrender our lives to God to gain His favor. We offer ourselves to Him in response to the favor He’s already freely shown us because of the saving work of Jesus!

Paul’s words finally relieved me of my mistaken notion that worship is something that’s done out of sheer, sustained joy in the Lord. I’ve heard worship referred to as “worth-ship”—literally a time to show God His worth—and the worth of God is not something that depreciates or fluctuates over time. It’s solid, constant, steady. So even though we may go through hard seasons when our hearts fail us, worship is still a reasonable act.

No matter how I may feel about worshiping God in the moment, “The duty,” says C. S. Lewis, “exists for the delight.”

Worship is not something that can be learned in a classroom or perfected with the help of a textbook. It’s way more hands-on than that! Worship is the lived experience of offering myself, moment by moment and day by day, to a living God. It is opening my hands and letting go of whatever I am clinging to instead of Him. It is acting as if everything He says about Himself and about me is absolutely true.

When I surrender my life as a sacrifice to God, I am worshiping Him. Every moment of praising God is a reordering of my own status. He reigns. Therefore, I do not. He rules. Therefore, I do not. He is sovereign. Therefore, I am not.

When I say, “Not my will, but Yours, God,” I am worshiping.

When I say, “I don’t know what’s best for me, God. But I believe that You do, and I’m going to trust You,” I am worshiping.

When I say, “I like my plan, God, but if You have a better one, replace mine with Yours,” I am worshiping.

When I serve others before pleasing myself, I am worshiping.

When I want reconciliation more than I want to be seen as right, I am worshiping.

When I look for ways to leave my faith behind so that others can be blessed when I am gone, I am worshiping.

If the thought of opening your hands to God and offering Him your life sounds too scary, too big, too terrifying, try this:

Surrender the moment in front of you right now.
Pray the prayer that’s on your heart today, this moment, even if you’re not sure of the words. (He’s promised to help with that, too!)
Help the person in need standing before you now, today.
Steal the quiet minute you have for prayer right now, instead of lamenting the half hour you don’t have.
Offer God the grief that’s eating at the edges of your heart today. It will only be bigger tomorrow.
Forgive the person who hurt you today. Don’t wait. Do it now.
Confess the wrong you’re sick over this minute, and fall into the bottomless forgiveness of God. He’s waiting. He’s right here.

This is the moment for your surrender and for mine. Yes, we’ll take three steps forward and two steps back some days. No matter. Take the steps anyway. Take them now.

Worship is the lived experience of offering myself, moment by moment and day by day, to a living God. It is opening my hands and letting go of whatever I am clinging to instead of Him. It is acting as if everything He says about Himself and about me is absolutely true.

I don’t want to be in charge. Really, I don’t. I just want to be His. When we surrender, we invite God into our story as our King, and we take our rightful place in His story as beloved children and heirs. That kind of surrender is the real secret to joy—joy that is never threatened by circumstances that change day to day. Who wouldn’t release their attempts to control life’s crazy twists and turns to live like a fearless, well-loved child instead?

I give up. How about you?