The Surrender I Keep Avoiding

Devotional

You already know what it is.

Nobody has to name it for you. There's something God has been pressing on and you've been pressing back. Not loudly. You haven't refused. You've just been turning a yes into a not-yet for longer than you'd admit to anybody.

And it isn't confusion. You know what it is. It's a cost you haven't been willing to pay.

We talk about surrender like it's mostly a feeling. A moment where you finally let go and get some peace about it. Scripture shows you something a lot more physical than that.

It shows you a man face-down in dirt.

"And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.'"

Jesus doesn't drift serenely toward the cross. He asks for another way. Out loud. And Luke says he sweat like drops of blood doing it.

Which means the resistance was real. That's what makes the obedience real. If the cup had been easy to drink, "not as I will" would be an empty sentence.

But here's what makes his surrender different from just getting overpowered, and John gives you a detail I never get over.

The soldiers come with torches. Jesus doesn't hide. He walks toward them and asks who they're looking for. They say Jesus of Nazareth. And he says, "I am he."

"When Jesus said to them, 'I am he,' they drew back and fell to the ground."

A whole arresting party on their backs in the garden. From a sentence.

That's not a man getting taken. That's a king putting down a weapon he could have used. One word and they're in the dirt. And then he stands there and lets them tie his wrists.

Peter pulls a sword, because Peter would, and Jesus tells him to put it away: "Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

Given. Not forced on him. The Father handed it over and the Son took it.

And this wasn't a Thursday-night decision. "I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me." That was the shape of the entire life. His will wasn't absent. It was submitted. Those are two different things, and the difference is everything.

So what does that do for the thing you're avoiding?

First, it means your resistance isn't shocking to God. Jesus asked for another way. "I don't want to" is not disqualifying. God isn't recruiting people who find obedience easy. There aren't any.

Second, surrender isn't the end of the story. Look at Paul: "He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him."

Therefore. The exaltation came through the humiliation, not around it. Down was the way up. God doesn't waste a surrender.

Now, you can't see what's on the other side of your yes. That's exactly why it takes trust.

But you can see what was on the other side of his. It was you.

So don't wait for this to feel safe. It won't. Don't wait until you can trace all the reasons. You won't.

Go back to the garden instead. Watch him put his hands out.

The one asking you to open yours opened his first, and kept them open all the way to the nails.

Every knee bows eventually. The only question is whether yours bends now, in trust, or later, in recognition.

Open your hands. He's worth whatever's in them.