Surrender: Upside Down or Right Way Up?

I’ve been thinking about surrender a lot lately.  I watch in awe as people sell their homes to go to a different country and live Jesus out loud – in a way that can make all the difference in the world to those they go to.  I think about one couple who had just finished both of their medical specialties and abandoned the potential of a huge income to go to an area of the hills of South Asia where people haven’t heard about Jesus.  I think of other friends who finally, after years of infertility and hopeful, prayerful waiting, progressed to the top of the adoption waiting list in Australia, only to obey God’s call to go, which for them meant giving up any known possibility of having kids.  Crazy surrender!  Upside down choices.  Their way of thinking is counter-cultural.  It doesn't make sense.

But it does to God.

In fact, He came up with that kind of thinking; where millions and millions of the world’s population who have no chance of hearing about Jesus matter to Him, where the 200 people who died as you read these words and who have never heard about Jesus matter to Him, as do the 300 who were born in these minutes and who at this time in history have no hope of hearing. 

In his redchurch.org blog, ‘The Rise of the 2^nd Wave Prosperity Gospel’, Mark Sayers writes, “It offers self actualisation rather than self-denial. Social Justice without personal cost. Discipleship without responsibility.”

And I wonder, how will people hear without self-denial?  How will they receive justice and mercy without personal cost?  How will they be discipled unless someone takes the responsibility, seeing them as entrusted by God?

I wonder.

We talk about surrender, giving all for Jesus, but…

...we just need to do this first

...we’re not sure we could handle that

...we’ll surrender anything except [insert idol of choice here]. 

But true surrender knows no limits – or at least it acknowledges limits and asks God to invade and do His thing to change us.  Don’t we want to be like that?  People who will step out of our comfort zone, without dragging our feet or having a foot in both camps?  People who will be bold and brave, or even scared-to-death-but-willing?  Then maybe we’ll be reflecting some of those upside-down things that God holds dear to His heart and look much more like Him than like the world that tarnishes and erodes.

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Next blog: Surrender: Upside Down Living in Hard Places