True Surrender—What does it look like?
Matthew 5:3 says blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
To be poor in spirit means to know that you have nothing to offer God. We’re created in God’s image but we are spiritually bankrupt. There is nothing we can do, say, create, or control that will change that fact. There is nothing we can do to earn righteousness.
This goes against what the world says. This is contradictory to what most Christians even say today. There are many corrupt beliefs that are running rampant in today’s culture. Most of them though, (and those that are claiming to be Christian beliefs too) run on the idea that it is up to us. The beliefs run on the idea that we are enough to fix it, to save, to control. “You are enough” has become the Gen Z catchphrase, maybe even the millennial catchphrase, replacing “Faith. Hope. Love.”
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is the very first, in what is called the beatitudes. It is the very first thing Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount. I recently read in a book that people choose the words they use and the words people choose shows how they believe and how they perceive things. As the author goes on to explain how this is true, it really hit home for me because, well, I’m a writer. As a writer, every word has to fight for its place on a page. Editing a piece of writing usually involves a lot of cutting (although, there is a lot of adding too sometimes). We don’t get an editing process on the words we speak. Yet, we still choose them just as we choose the words we write. If we, humans, are picky about the words we use, the same can be said about God. In fact, I would argue even more so because He is God. Of course God chooses the words He speaks and each word is important. Jesus’s first teaching in the Sermon on the Mount is to bring people to salvation.
Jesus points to the core of the issue in his first words. It isn’t about us, what we did, what we can do, our talents, our abilities, or even who are friends are. It’s about Him. We cannot “just be a good person” because God defines what is good and that is himself—Jesus says that the only good thing is God. (Mark 10:18)
We have to come to terms with the fact that we’re sinners. We are sinny, sinner, sinnersons, as I used to tell the girls in my Bible class. We have to realize that fact. We have accept that fact. We have to come to the place where we know that it isn’t us that gets us into heaven. It isn’t our deeds that get us into heaven. It is Christ and his sacrifice.
It might seem as though I am beating a dead horse (which my husband tells me I do all the time) and I probably am. I am repeating the same thesis statement over and over again but this is the most important part of faith. This is a core part of the gospel. If we could achieve righteousness on our own, we wouldn’t have needed Christ to die on the cross. In order to believe that Christ died on the cross and rose again in three days, we have to believe that we are sinners who need to be saved.
“If you believe that you can be a good person, if you believe that you’re enough, if you believe that you can do it on your own, then you are missing it.”
I spent far too long of my life struggling with my testimony because it was all up in my head. I knew Christ was there. I was saved at a young age but I never had the true conversion part of the gospel. It was like I said yes to Jesus saving me but not yes to following him. I was missing the part where you realize you cannot do it on your own, you need Jesus and you surrender to Christ. This is letting go of everything we have tried to cling to for answers. This is letting go of the belief of “yeah, but _____________” and it is letting go of the idea that you can be God. Trust me, I tried doing those parts too. It didn’t work out well.
True surrender is when you give your heart to Christ and leave it there. There is no more “okay, but” there is no more mental arguments as you wrestle with belief. There is no more picking up control again and trying to figure it out yourself. True surrender is giving up what you want and trusting God to do what is best for you (and his kingdom). Realizing we are a sinner and surrendering to Jesus is when we repent.
There are many different definitions of the word repent. The one that really sticks out to me is the one that says “to change one’s mind.” When we repent we are changing our mind and we are deciding to leave the sin behind. We are changing our mind that -fill in the worldly thing here- isn’t enough and we need Jesus. We are changing our mind about the world and what is promises and choosing the God that gives eternal life.
If Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins, if we believe that he died and rose again, that means the other pages of the Bible are true too. True surrender is deciding to let God be God and to follow his teachings and commands. There is time after time in the Bible where Jesus tells us to follow his teachings, his commands, and teach others his teaching and his commands.
We don’t get to say what parts of the Bible are true and try to reconcile the Bible to what the world says. Jesus says the world will go against Him and us in the process. That’s why we have to cling to Jesus and trust in him. But, we cannot surrender our will over to His when we haven’t come to the point where we recognize our own sinful nature and realize that it isn’t up to us. We don’t do things for Jesus. We do them because of Jesus.
In those moments of true surrender, when we finally give it over to God, when we truly accept salvation, that is when the change happens. I used to struggle so much because I didn’t have that moment. I felt like I was always the same, just someone who was stronger and more educated than who I was before. All my Jesus was head knowledge though. I would get that moment, that moment of true surrender and when I got to that moment, real change started to happen.