Surrender is not the same thing as passivity. God’s will for your life involves exercising creativity, making choices, and taking initiatives. Surrender does not mean being a doormat. It does not mean you accept circumstances fatalistically. Often it means you will have to fight to challenge the status quo. It doesn’t mean that you stop using your mind, stop asking questions, or stop thinking critically. Surrender is not a crutch for weak people who cannot handle life.
Instead, surrender is the glad and voluntary acknowledgement that there is a God and it is not me. His purposes are often wiser and better than our desires. Jesus does not come to rearrange the outside of our life the way we want. He comes to rearrange the inside of our life the way God wants.
John Ortberg, The Me I want to Be 
(Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2010), 62.
