Absolute Surrender

 

 Andrew Murray

“And Ben-hadad the king of Syria gathered all his host together: and there were thirty and two kings with him, and horses, and chariots: and he went up and besieged Samaria, and warred against it. And he sent messengers to Ahab king of Israel into the city, and said unto him, "Thus says Ben-hadad, Your silver and your gold is mine; your wives also and your children, even the goodliest, are mine. And the king of Israel answered and said, My lord, O king, according to your saying, I am yours and all that I have” (1 Kings 20:1-4).

What Ben Hadad had asked for was absolute surrender; and what Ahab gave was what was asked of him—absolute surrender. I want to use these words: “My lord, O king, according to your saying, I am yours, and all that I have,” as the words of absolute surrender with which every child of God ought to yield himself to His Father. We have heard it before, but we need to hear it very definitely—the condition of God’s blessing is absolute surrender of all into His hands. Praise God! If our hearts are willing for that, there is no end to what God will do for us, and to the blessing God will bestow.

Absolute surrender—let me tell you where I got those words. I used them myself often, and you have heard them numberless times. But in Scotland once I was in a company where we were talking about the condition of Christ’s Church, and what the great need of the Church and of believers is; and there was in our company a godly worker who has much to do in training workers, and I asked him what he would say was the great need of the Church, and the message that ought to be preached. He answered very quietly and simply and determinedly: “Absolute surrender to God is the one thing.”

The words struck me as never before. And that man began to tell how, in the Christian workers with whom he had to deal, he finds that if they are sound on that point, the importance of being absolutely surrendered to God, that even though they be backward or uneducated, if they are willing to be taught and helped, then they always improve; whereas others, who are not sound on absolute surrender and submission to God, will very often go back and leave the work.

The condition for obtaining God’s full blessing is absolute surrender to Him. And now, I desire by God’s grace to give to you the message—that your God in Heaven answers the prayers which you have offered for blessing on yourselves and for blessing on those around you by this one condition or demand: Are you willing to surrender yourselves absolutely into His hands? What is our answer going to be?

God knows there are hundreds of hearts who have said they want to be fully surrendered. There are hundreds more who long to say they want to be fully surrendered, but hardly dare to do so. There are hearts who have said they want fully surrender, but who have yet miserably failed, and who feel themselves condemned because they did not find the secret of the power to live that life of full absolute surrender. May God have a word for each of us!

Let me say, first of all, that God claims it from us.

God Expects Your Surrender.

Yes, “surrender” has its foundation in the very nature of God. God cannot do otherwise. Who is God? He is the Fountain of life, the only Source of existence and power and goodness, and throughout the universe there is nothing good but what God works. God has created the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the flowers, and the trees, and the grass; and are they not all absolutely surrendered to God and His will? Do they not allow God to work in them just what He pleases? When God clothes the lily with its beauty, is it not yielded up, surrendered, given over to God as He works in its beauty?

And you, God’s redeemed children, can you think that God can work His work in you, if there is only half or a part of you surrendered to God? He cannot do it. God is life, and love, and blessing, and power, and infinite beauty, and God delights to communicate Himself to every child who is prepared to receive Him; but the lack of absolute surrender is the one thing that hinders God. Yet, God comes, and as God, He claims that absolute surrender.

You know in your daily life what absolute surrender is. You know that everything has to be given up or surrendered to its special, definite objective and service. I have a pen in my pocket, and that pen is absolutely surrendered to the one work of writing, and that pen must be absolutely surrendered to my hand, if I am to write properly with it. If another holds it partly, I cannot write properly. My coat is absolutely given up or surrendered to cover my body. The building we are in is entirely given up or surrendered to religious services. But how, do you expect that in your immortal being, in the divine nature that you have received by regeneration of the Holy Ghost, God can work His work, every day and every hour, unless you are entirely given up or absolutely surrendered to Him? God cannot.

The Temple of Solomon was absolutely surrendered to God when it was dedicated to Him. Every one of us is a temple of God, in which God will dwell and work mightily, on one condition—absolute surrender to Him. God claims it, God is worthy of it, and without it, God cannot work His blessed work in us. God not only claims absolute surrender, but God will work it Himself.

God Accomplishes Your Surrender.

 I am sure there is many a heart that says: “Ah, but that absolute surrender implies so much!” Someone says: “Oh, I have passed through so much trial and suffering, and there is so much of the self-life still remaining, and I dare not face the entire giving up of self, because I know it will cause so much trouble and agony.” Alas! alas! that God’s children could have such thoughts of Him, such cruel thoughts. Oh, I come to you with a message, fearful and anxious one. God does not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, or by the power of your will; God is willing to work it in you. Do we not read: “It is God that works in us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13)?

That is what we should seek for—to go on our faces before God, until our hearts learn to believe that the everlasting God Himself will come in to turn out what is wrong, to conquer what is evil, and to work what is well-pleasing in His blessed sight. God Himself will work it in you. Look at the men in the Old Testament, like Abraham. Do you think it was by accident that God found that man, the father of the faithful and the Friend of God, and that it was Abraham himself, apart from God, who had such faith and such obedience and such devotion?

You know it is not so. God raised him up and prepared him as an instrument for His glory. Did not God say to Pharaoh: “For this cause have I raised you up, for to show in you my power” (Ex. 9:16)? And if God said that of him, will not God say it far more of every child of His own? Oh, I want to encourage you, and I want you to cast away every fear. Come with that feeble desire; and if there is the fear which says: “Oh, my desire is not strong enough, I am not willing for everything that may come, I do not feel bold enough to say I can conquer everything”—I pray you, learn to know and trust your God. Say: “My God, I am willing to be made willing by Your power.”

If there is anything holding you back, or any sacrifice you are afraid of making, come to God now, and prove how gracious your God is, and be not afraid that what He will command from you, He will not, also, bestow. God comes and offers to work this absolute surrender in you. All the searching, and hungering, and longings that are in your heart, I tell you, they are the drawings of the divine magnet, Christ Jesus. He lived a life of absolute surrender, and He now has possession of you; He is living in your heart by His Holy Spirit.

You have hindered and hindered Him terribly, but He desires to help you to get hold of Him completely. He comes and draws you now by His message and words. Will you not come and trust God to work in you that absolute surrender to Himself? Yes, blessed be God, He can do it, and He will do it. God not only claims it and works it, but God accepts it when we bring it to Him.

God Accepts Your Surrender

God works our surrender in the secret of our heart. God urges us by the hidden power of His Holy Spirit to come and confess our absolute surrender.  We need to vocalise it, and to bring and to yield our will to Him in absolute surrender. But remember, when you come and bring God that absolute surrender, it may, as far as your feelings or your consciousness are concerned, be a thing of great imperfection. You may doubt and hesitate and say: “Is it absolute surrender?” But, oh, remember there was once a man to whom Christ had said: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes” (Mark 9:23). And his heart was afraid, and he cried out: “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).

That was a faith that triumphed over the Devil, and the evil spirit was cast out. Therefore, if you come and say: “Lord, I yield myself in absolute surrender to my God,” even though it be with a trembling heart and with the consciousness that says: “I do not feel the power, I do not feel the determination, I do not feel the assurance,” nevertheless, God will succeed. Be not afraid, but come just as you are, and even in the midst of your trembling, and the power of the Holy Spirit will work.

Have you not learned the lesson that the Holy Spirit works with mighty power, while in our human flesh everything appears feeble and weak? Look at the Lord Jesus Christ in Gethsemane. We read that He, “through the eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14), offered Himself a sacrifice unto God. The Almighty Spirit of God was enabling Him to do it. And yet what agony and fear and exceeding sorrow came over Him, and how He prayed! Externally, you can see no sign of the mighty power of the Spirit, but the Spirit of God was there. Even so, while you are feeble and fighting and trembling, in faith in the hidden work of God’s Spirit, do not fear, but yield yourself to God.

When you do yield yourself in absolute surrender, let it be in the faith that God does accept of it. That is the great point, and that is what we so often miss—that believers should be thus occupied with God in this matter of surrender. I pray you, be occupied with God. We want to get help, every one of us, so that in our daily life God shall be clearer to us, that God shall have the right place, and be “all in all.” If we are to have Him in first place throughout our life, let us begin now and look away from ourselves, and look up to God. Let each believe—while I, a poor worm on earth and a trembling child of God, full of failure and sin and fear, bow here, and no one knows what passes through my heart, and while I, in simplicity say, “O God, I accept Your terms; I have pleaded for blessing on myself and others, I have accepted Your terms of absolute surrender”—while your heart says that in deep silence, remember there is a God present that takes note of it, and writes it down in His book, There is a God present who at that very moment takes possession of you. You may not feel it, you may not realize it, but God takes possession, if you will trust Him. God not only claims it, and works it, and accepts it, when we bring it, but God maintains it.

God Maintains Your Surrender

That is the great difficulty with many, how to maintain that absolute surrender. People say: “I have often been stirred at a meeting, or at a convention, and I have consecrated myself to God, but it has passed away. I know it may last for a week or for a month, but away it fades, and after a time it is all gone.” But listen! It is because you do not believe what I am now going to tell you and remind you of. When God has begun the work of absolute surrender in you, and when God has accepted your surrender, then God holds Himself bound to care for it and to keep it. Will you believe that?

 Philippians 1:6. “Being confident of this very thing, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.” 2 Timothy 1:12.  “For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.” 1 Thessalonians 5:24. “Faithful is He that called you, who also will do it.”

In this matter of surrender there are two: God and I—I, a worm, God, the everlasting and omnipotent Jehovah. Worm, are you afraid to trust yourself into the hand of the mighty God? God is willing. Do you not believe that He can keep you continually, day by day, and moment by moment? “Moment by moment I’m kept in His love; Moment by moment I’ve life from above.” If God allows the sun to shine upon you moment by moment, without intermission, will not God let His life shine upon you every moment?

Why have you not experienced it? Because you have not trusted God for it, and you do not surrender yourself absolutely to God in that trust. A life of absolute surrender has its difficulties. I do not deny that. Yes, it has something far more than difficulties: it is a life that with men is absolutely impossible. But by the grace of God, by the power of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, it is a life to which we are destined, and a life that is possible for us. Amen? Praise God! Let us believe that God will maintain it.

Some of you have read the words of that aged saint who, on his ninetieth birthday, told of all God’s goodness to him—I mean George Muller. What did he say he believed to be the secret of his happiness, and of all the blessing which God had given him? He said he believed there were two or three reasons. The one was that he had been enabled by grace to maintain a good conscience before God, day by day; the other was, that he was a lover of God’s Word. Ah, yes, a good conscience is complete obedience to God, day by day, and fellowship with God every day in His Word, and a third, prayer.—That is a life of absolute surrender.

Such a life has two sides—on the one side, absolute surrender to work what God wants you to do; on the other side, to let God work what He wants to do in your life. First, to do what God wants you to do. Give up yourselves absolutely to the will of God. You know something of that will; not enough, perhaps, and far from all. But sincerely say to the Lord God: “By Your grace I desire to do Your will in everything, every moment of every day.” Say: “Lord God, not a word upon my tongue but for Your glory, not a movement of my temper but for Your glory, not an affection of love or hate in my heart but for Your glory, and according to Your blessed will.”

Someone will say: “Do you think that’s possible?” I ask, “What has God promised you, and what can God do to fill a vessel absolutely surrendered to Him?” God wants to bless you in a way beyond what you expect. From the beginning of the world, ear has not heard, neither has the eye seen, what God has prepared for them that wait for Him (Isaiah 64:4). God has prepared unheard-of things, blessings much more wonderful than you can imagine, mightier than you can conceive. They are divine blessings.

Say with me now: “I give myself absolutely to God, to His will, to do only what He wants.” It is God who will enable you to carry out the surrender. And, on the other side, come and say: “I give myself absolutely to God, to let Him work in me, to will and to do of His good pleasure, as He has promised to do.” Yes, the living God wants to work in His children in a way that we cannot understand, but that God’s Word has revealed, and He wants to work in us every moment of the day. God is willing to maintain our life. Only let our absolute surrender be one of simple, childlike, and unbounded trust.

God Blesses When You Surrender

Our absolute surrender to God will be wonderfully blessed. What Ahab said to his enemy, King Ben-hadad—“My lord, O king, according to your word I am yours, and all that I have”—shall we not say to our God and loving Father? If we do say it, God’s blessing will come upon us. God wants us to be separate from the world; we are called to come out from the world that hates God. Come out for God, and say: “Lord, I’ll do anything for You.” If you say that with prayer, and speak that into God’s ear, He will accept it, and He will teach you what it means. I say again, God will bless you.

You have been praying for blessing. But do remember, there must be absolute surrender. At every tea-table you see it. Why is tea poured into that cup? Because it is empty, and given up and surrendered for the tea. But put ink, or vinegar, or wine into it, and can they pour the tea into the vessel? Can God fill you, can God bless you, if you are not absolutely surrendered to Him? He cannot. Let us believe God has wonderful blessings for us, if we will but stand up for God, and say, though be it with a trembling will, yet with a believing heart: “O God, I accept Your demands. I am Yours and all that I have. Absolute surrender is what my soul yields to You by divine grace.”

You may not have such strong and clear feelings of deliverances as you would desire to have, but humble yourselves in His sight, and acknowledge that you have grieved the Holy Spirit by your self-will, self-confidence, and self-effort. Bow humbly before Him in the confession of that self-will, confidence, and pride, and ask him to break your heart and to bring you into the dust before Him. Then, as you bow before Him, just accept God’s teaching that in your flesh “there dwells no good thing” (Rom. 7:18), and that nothing will help you, except another life which must come in. You must decrease, while He must increase. You must deny yourself once and for all. Denying self every moment must be the power of your life. Then Christ will come in and take full possession of you. 

When was Peter delivered from himself? When was the change accomplished? The change began with Peter weeping after he had denied Christ thrice. Later, the Holy Spirit came down and filled his heart. God the Father loves to give us the power of His Spirit. We have the Spirit of God dwelling within us. We come to God confessing that, and praising God for it, and yet confessing how we have grieved the Spirit. Then we bow our knees to the Father to ask that He would strengthen us with all might by the Spirit in the inner man, and that He would fill us with His mighty power. And as the Spirit reveals Christ to us, Christ comes to live in our hearts forever, and the self-life is cast out.

Let us bow before God in humility, and in that humility confess before Him the state of the whole Church. No words can tell the sad state of the Church of Christ on earth. I wish I had words to speak what I sometimes feel about it. Just think of the Christians around you. I do not speak of nominal Christians, or of professing Christians, but I speak of hundreds and thousands of honest, earnest Christians who are not living a life in the power of God or to His glory. So little power, so little devotion or consecration to God, so little perception of the truth that a Christian is a man or woman utterly surrendered to God’s will!

We need to confess the sins of God’s people, and to humble ourselves. We are members of a sickly body. The sickliness of the body will hinder us, and break us down, unless we come to God, and in confession, separate ourselves from partnership with worldliness, from coldness toward each other; unless we give up ourselves entirely and wholly to God. How much Christian work is being done in the spirit of the flesh and in the power of self! How much work, day by day, in which human energy—our will and our thoughts about the work—is continually manifested, and in which there is but little of waiting upon God, and upon the power of the Holy Spirit!

Let us make confession of our sins and lacks before God. As we confess the state of the Church and the feebleness and sinfulness of the work for God among us. Let us come back and look at ourselves. Who is there among us who truly longs to be delivered from the power of the self-life, who truly acknowledges that he or she has been living in the power of self and the flesh?  Who is willing to cast all at the feet of Christ?

There is deliverance. I heard of one who had been an earnest Christian, and who spoke about the “cruel” thought of separation and death. But you do not think that, do you? What are we to think of separation and death? Here is what we should think: death was the path to glory for Christ. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross. The cross was the birthplace of His everlasting glory. Do you love Christ? Do you long to be in Christ, and yet not act like Him? Let death be to you the most desirable thing on earth—death to self, and separation from the world, but fellowship with Christ.

Separation—do you think it a hard thing to be called to be entirely free from the world, and by that separation to be united to God and His love, by separation, to become prepared for living and walking with God every day? Surely one ought to say: “Bring me separation and death, that a life of full fellowship with God and Christ may reign within me.” Come and cast your self-life and flesh-life at the feet of Jesus. Then trust Him. Do not worry yourselves with trying to understand all about it. Come with a living faith that Christ will come into you with the power of His death and the power of His life; and then the Holy Spirit will bring the whole Christ—Christ crucified and risen and living in glory—into your heart as you yield to Him in absolute surrender.