Greetings to you in the beautiful wonderful, and powerful name of Jesus Christ – THE Risen Saviour! Another beautiful morning in the Kingdom – a day that God has created for us and according to Scripture it is unique! Never has there been a day like this – filled with the potential and the mercies and the goodness of God that wasn’t there yesterday and will be different tomorrow! So, this morning we will rejoice and give thanks and ask – Lord, please bless this day. We are looking forward to what You will do and for the strength You will give for the challenges and opportunities that will be ours. I trust that you had a good weekend and Monday. I will be praying for you today, asking Father to reveal Himself to you through your relationships, responsibilities, and responses.
Over the past week I have been pondering over a couple of words and what they mean and why they are appearing in words I am reading, songs I am hearing, and in thoughts I am thinking. The two words are – ‘surrender’ and ‘submission’ and themes that related to those words. First, I had to find a proper definition because our initial response to these words is not always positive. Therefore, surrender means to cease resistance to an opponent or enemy or authority, to yield, to accept , to be aware of another’s will, or letting go; submission means the action of surrender, obedience, or acceptance of control.
Second, I needed to consider the spiritual context and why God would ask us to surrender and to submit. I do not think God would want something from us that would not be beneficial to us. Now, I am going to suggest ideas that I have learned personally and from the testimony from experienced spiritual explorers. One observation, the more often one participates in surrender and submission the more understanding one has and therefore the more credibility the testimony has. Surrender seems to bring contentment, peacefulness, lack of aggressive behaviour, a deep sense of well-being, and an overwhelming satisfaction. Submission seems to bring enhanced relationships,an inner strength, an open heart, flexibility within the thinking process, and unexpected achievement and fulfilment. Oddly enough, not what I expected.
Third, I needed to hear from the minstrels and musicians…you probably saw that coming. I use a worship-planning website and using just the two words – surrender and submission, I was given 3181 suggestions for surrender and 1020 suggestions for submission. Just a quick glimpse of song titles indicated that the two ‘s-words’ are interdependent in may ways. A few of the song titles were: I surrender all ; Take my life and let it be ; Draw me nearer , Heart of worship , How great Thou art, Come thou fount, and When I survey the wondrous cross. I was surprised, well not really, that not one song ever alluded to how humiliating or how awful or how intrusive or how terrible it was to surrender to God or to be in submission to Him. In fact, just the opposite was true…and I had been singing about my agreement that truth for years. It seemed to me that the best parts of my life were when I had surrendered to God and was in submission to God.
So let me give you something to ponder…what does surrender to God and/or submission to Him mean to you? what hymn or song expresses your experience of surrender/submission? has surrender/submission been positive or negative?
Have a blessed day!