Steps to Surrender

Hello, my friends! It’s amazing to realize that I’ve been at Sonrise for thirty years. I came here when I was 29—so I’ve spent more than half my life here! When you’re a child you can never imagine how your life will turn out, but I can say, looking back—I’ve been incredibly blessed! I have been blessed to spend these years with you!

But that means I’m 59, and these days, we keep the closed captions on when we watch movies. Talk about profanity! When you’re just listening to movies, you tend to overlook the bad words, but when you’re actively reading them, you can’t miss them. I want to warn you that I will be using some bad words and some culturally profane words in my message today, but that’s the only way to get this message across.

Last week, I was reading through the Psalms and came across these words from Psalm 107:1-2, “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story…” Psalm 107:1-2 (NIV) Friends, this is my story…

Spiritually, I grew up believing that there was a God, but I had decided at an early age that I was going to live my life as a good, moral person without Him. After all, if He really did exist, wouldn’t He accept me if I had lived my life basically well?

When I was 14 years old, my life came crashing down when my mom and dad split up. That next year, my mom came home from work and told my sister and brother that she had become a Christian. I thought she was strange, because aren’t we all Christians? We’re Americans, live good lives, and are okay on our own. Right?

She started taking us to church, and I fought it quite hard, but my mom insisted on taking us all to church with her. The youth group time was in the book of Romans on Sunday mornings, and I encountered this Bible passage, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Romans 5:6-8 (NLT) That began to penetrate deep into my heart. How could God love me when I was so far from Him? How could He love me while I was still resisting Him?

In the fall of 1979, when I had just turned 15, I surrendered my life to God, and even though that was nearly 45 years ago, I’ve never gotten over the fact that God could love me, a broken, sinful person. I owe everything I am to Him.

That was my first Step of Surrender: Sinner to Saint. I had to come to terms with my own spiritual condition. I was not a somewhat good person who needed improvement. No, I was a spiritually lost sinner who needed to be saved. I had to surrender. That word, surrender, is one of our culture’s profane words. It means “To give up or hand over, to cease resistance to an opponent and submit to their authority.” Nothing in our American culture encourages this! If you surrender, you are weak. Friends, nothing compares with the reality that we have a God who pursues a continuing love relationship with us that is both real and personal. A love relationship with him should be your life’s most important factor. But you must surrender to Him!

Friends, God has reached out to you with His love to pursue and save you. Don’t hold you back from surrendering your life to Him! If you’ve never…

Those next few years saw an explosion in my spiritual growth and relationships with other believers. I soaked up everything I could to learn more about this God who saved me. Then, when I turned 18 and was in my senior year of high school, I read this book by Chuck Swindoll called Improving Your Serve. It rocked my world!

I was still a typical self-centered California kid who wanted life to revolve around him. This book led to my second Step of Surrender: Saint to Servant.

Chuck Swindoll taught me that the way up is down. Actually, Jesus taught me that, but it took Swindoll’s book to drive it deep into my heart. He wrote, “Serving and giving don’t come naturally. Living an unselfish life is an art!… Following God’s directives will bring the one benefit not found in the world’s empty promises: a deep sense of lasting satisfaction.”

One of the most challenging things about pastoring is getting people to see their own selfish hearts—even as Christians. As a culture, we believe we should primarily be concerned with our personal profit and pleasure. Jesus had to challenge His disciples with this problem on more than one occasion. In Mark 10, we see this

struggle: “So Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” Mark 10:42-45 (NLT)

The background of this passage is that two of his leading disciples asked to be put at the head of the line in Jesus’ kingdom. Jesus used that as an opportunity to remind them of why He came: “To serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.’” The natural way of our world seeks power and position, but the way of Christ seeks humility and service to others. That word, servant, is one of our culture’s profane words. It means “A person who performs duties for others.” We can’t serve others! We must be served by others! Nothing in our culture celebrates this servanthood.

So, when I was 18, I took that Step of Surrender and committed my life to becoming a servant of Jesus. I had no idea what that would cost me, but I took Jesus’ words seriously. Friends, there are only two paths to life: the path of self-promotion or the path of humility and service. We choose which path to walk every day.

Friends, Jesus came to serve, not be served. Don’t be selfish, and live your life for your own gain. Give your life up for Him. If you’ve never…

I graduated from high school and went off to college to study Business. I still wanted to make it big, become rich, and drive an expensive car to work every day at one of the skyscrapers in San Francisco. The California Dream is hard to leave!

Then, after two years into my business program, God began to invite me into a third Step of Surrender: Servant to Slave. I was learning to be a servant, but in many ways, it was still on my own terms. After my second year of college, I was asked to become an intern that summer and lead our youth ministry. I loved business, but God was stirring up something else in my heart—a desire to pastor teenagers.

I was given an office, a budget, and the keys to the church van! One part of the job was teaching the youth on Sundays, so I began teaching the Book of Philippians using all the tools I had been learning in my Bible classes. Those twelve weeks changed me. I learned so much as I developed those messages!

Paul starts the book off with these words: “Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus…” “Servant”? I had made that step of surrender, but as I dug deeper, I saw that the original word was not servant but actually slave. Why would Paul call him and Timothy slaves and not servants? I had never heard that taught in church! In calling themselves slaves, he was boldly claiming that they were no longer in control of their lives but had been bought by Christ. A slave is owned by another person, either by purchase, debt, or birth. There is an enormous difference between being a servant and being a slave. A servant is a free person who works or volunteers, but a slave is not free and owned by another. A servant returns home at night as a free person, but a slave never stops being a slave and forever remains at the bidding of his master.

As I began to understand this, I saw it repeated in the Bible. The Apostles all used that same word to describe their relationship with Jesus. Paul called himself a slave. Peter called himself a slave. James called himself a slave. Jude called himself a slave. John called himself a slave. Think of it! The most powerful men in the Early Church all had the same perspective on their identity: They were slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ! They could think of themselves as disciples or apostles, but they chose to call themselves slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. They considered themselves slaves not out of compulsion or law but as willing slaves because of what Jesus had done for them.

Jesus modeled that for them! Paul wrote in Philippians 2, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too. You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had.

“Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

“Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:3-11 (NLT)

I knew I had to take this Step of Surrender! That word, slave, is one of our culture’s most profane words. It means “A person who works for and obeys another and is considered their property.” Isn’t slavery illegal, unethical, and unjust? Not if it’s slavery to Jesus Christ—the one who became a slave for us. Oswald Chambers said it well, “The passion of Christianity comes from deliberately signing away our own rights and becoming a slave of Jesus Christ.” Friends, have you become a slave of Jesus Christ? Have you given up complete ownership of your life to Him?

It’s so easy for us to see things from a worldly point of view and not from God’s point of view. One of the most profane words in our culture is the word submission. In our world, submission is a bad thing. Weak people submit, and strong people rule. But the message of Jesus has turned that understanding completely upside down. Jesus was a servant. Jesus was a slave. Our culture defines submission as an inferior person bowing down to a superior person. Friends, Jesus turned the idea of submission upside down. For Jesus and those who follow Him, submission becomes a source of strength, power, courage, and honor. This new understanding baffled the ancient world—and it still does today in our world.

The Biblical concept of submission is found in the word’s definition. It means “To place in order. To place under in an orderly fashion.” Submission is not a value word; it’s a relationship word. It’s not about hierarchy; it’s about humility.

Biblical submission is anchored in Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lord, yet willingly submitted for our benefit. Jesus laid aside his rights, status, and privileges of being God for our salvation. Our culture cannot understand that when we submit to God and to one another, it’s not a submission born out of oppression or coercion—it’s born out of love. Submission is forsaking our rights, privileges, and status to humble ourselves— even to the point of death, as our Savior did for us.

We live in a world that prizes freedom above all things, and submission flies in the face of everything in our American culture. Friends, do you find joy and freedom in submission to Christ and the brothers and sisters around you? Don’t hold on to your life, or you will lose it. Lose it, and you will gain true life.

Years ago, Mary Beth and I had the honor to stand on the deck of the USS Missouri battleship in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. We stood on the spot where the Japanese forces surrendered to General Douglas MacArthur to bring an end to our Second World War. The Japanese General stuck out his hand to shake MacArthur’s hand, and MacArthur said, “I cannot shake your hand, sir, until you first surrender your sword.” In other words, “We can’t be friends as long as that sword hangs by your side. Give up the sword, and then we’ll shake hands.” The Japanese General laid down his sword.

A lot of us want to shake God’s hand while we carry our sword, the sword of our own will. But we must surrender our will to God before we can be in complete fellowship with Him and discover true life.

Life Level Application

1) HEAD: What has surrender looked like in your life? Has that turned out good or bad?

2) HEART: Think of the three Steps to Surrender: Sinner to Saint, Saint to Servant, and Servant to Slave. Which one has been most challenging to you? What stands in the way of total surrender to God?

3) HAND: What would it look like to take a step of surrender this week? How could you put your new step into practice?

4) HABITS: What has to change in your life to live out submission as Jesus did for us? How might that change your life?