Encouraging - Surrender

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.

Encouraging - Surrender

Surrender is not passivity or abdication. It is saying yes to God and life each day. It is accepting the gifts he has given me – my body, my mind, my biorhythms, my energy. It is letting go of my envy or desire for what he has given someone else. It is letting go of outcomes that in reality I cannot accept anyway. I surrender my ambitions, my dreams, my money, my relationships, my marital status, my time, and my desires to God. Surrender means I accept reality….Because I am a creature and not Creator, surrender is actually a better way to play the game. For I am not Master of the Board. Surrender opens me to God’s blessing.

John Ortberg, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI: 2007), 64-65.