Day 10 – The Heart Of Worship
The heart of worship is surrender…
Our reading today focuses on the concept of worship being a form of surrender. Unfortunately for many of us surrender falls into a visual of the white flag going up, admitting defeat, giving in to a stronger opponent, and like a captured criminal, having to give up our freedom. Surrender is something we see mainly in a negative light…As our reading points out today, we tend to resist surrender because in our competitive environment that we live in today, we are taught from a very early age, never give up and never give in. Our supreme goal is winning, succeeding, overcoming and conquering rather than submitting, surrendering, yielding, or obeying. But surrender to God is true worship.
We find ourselves giving ourselves to Him, not out of duty or fear but in a simple response to his amazing love because “he first loved us…”
True worship, (bringing pleasure to God) happens when you give (offer) yourself freely to God.
What keeps us from total surrender? Think about it just for a minute and ask yourself this question. What is holding me back from total surrender?
As someone who is trying to keep these blog posts much to a “reporting” style of writing, talking about the readings and not adding a lot of personal “spin” to them, I find that this area has always been the hardest area for me. For whatever reason, I have always been a person that has not wanted to totally surrender because I was afraid that God would turn me into some sort of Jesus Freak. I would lose my friends. Have to do things that are embarrassing and live a life of no fun, with a ton of rules.
I lived my life for many years knowing in my head that God loved me, sent his Son to die for me, and went to church.
It’s only been recently that I have experienced a renewal of God’s love and mercy in my life and found a newfound trust that He is actually for me, given me a personality and gifts that he’s happy with and I can trust him with my future!
I can really see how in todays reading there are three major areas that may have a grip on our lives and hold us back.
- Fear
- Pride
- Confusion
Can I trust God? There are so many examples of why God deserves our trust. This is crucial to surrender isn’t it. Our experiences in relationships that we have had can be pretty disappointing. If one person on earth has let us down, misunderstood us, hurt us, tried to control us, and perhaps even abused us, we can find it very difficult to trust anyone, even God. How can we surrender our lives if we don’t have trust? Our trust displaces and replaces fear.
Admitting our limitations. One of the greatest obstacles to total surrender is our pride. Boy this is a big one. We just don’t want to admit that we are not in control of everything. The desire to be in complete control has always been the greatest temptation. As with Adam and Eve in the garden… “take this fruit, you will be like God…”
Being the ground to air commander of our own lives leaves us open to a lot of stress. Life can be a struggle, but it’s even harder when our struggle is with God, and we aren’t going to win this one. As someone once said, “our arms are too short to box with God…”
A.W. Tozer said, “The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give the orders, and interfering with God’s work in us.”
Our reactions to our limitations can be pretty revealing. We can get irritated, mad and resentful. We want to be all and do all and get upset when it doesn’t go our way. Other people have what we want producing envy and jealousy in us or even self pity.
But wait…there’s more…. there some really good news!!
Having the weight of all that control (pride) on your shoulders can be lifted right off of you if you understand what surrender is.
It’s not passive resignation, fatalism, or excepting the status quo. It’s not repressing your personality. Like C.S. Lewis says “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be… It’s when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I begin to have a real personality of my own.”
Surrender says “yes” to God, and “yes” puts us in a place of humble submission and obedience. Surrendered people rely on God, admit their inability to control things, and obey God’s word.
Many of us come to a place in our lives where we may even say to God, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go, do whatever you want me to do, just show me what your will is and I will do it…”
Sounds good on the outside, but inside you still want to know what He’s up to before you do it and it doesn’t work that way. He says, “Commit all your ways to me and I’ll direct your path.” Commit first. Direction next…
Jesus was our example of complete surrender… he laid it all down didn’t he? “Father, not my will, but yours..” We are the benefactors of this divine loving and trusting surrender, and there are many examples of the blessing that comes from a bending knee, in humble surrender, for our lives.
Peace that passes understanding, joy unspeakable, and being able to be used by God for His purposes in other peoples lives to give hope and the good news.. You cannot even see what other people need if you are so focused on yourself.
Give it all to God…past wounds, hurts, failures, weaknesses, fear, pride, confusion, disappointments, resentments, anger and your future. Don’t argue any more with him. What better place to lay aside all of these things than at the feet of the One who truly loves us, has grace to fill our lives with and wisdom to teach us. As the song says, ” I surrender all, I surrender all, all to Jesus, my precious Saviour, I surrender all… “