What Happens When You Finally Surrender
“Then he said to them all: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’” — Luke 9:23
Opening
I want to talk this morning about one of the most misunderstood words in the Christian life: Surrender.
In our culture surrender is weakness. It is what you do when you have lost. When you have run out of options. When the fight is over and you have nothing left. We do not celebrate surrender. We celebrate perseverance, strength, not giving up, fighting until the end.
And then we come to church and we hear about surrender and we nod our heads and we sing the songs about it and we go home Monday morning and white-knuckle our lives the same way we always have. Because surrender still feels like losing. Even in church. This morning I want to show you that in the kingdom of God surrender is not the end of the fight. It is the beginning of the life you’ve been trying to build by yourself and failing.
The Sermon
Luke 9:23 is one of the most challenging verses in the entire New Testament. Jesus said it not to a small group of committed disciples He said it to a crowd. To everyone. To the person who was just checking Him out. To the person in the back who wasn’t sure. To the person who had been following Him for a while and thought they understood what they had signed up for.
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
Three things. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow me. Every word is important.
Deny yourself. Not deny yourself things though that may be part of it. Deny your self. The self that wants to be in charge. The self that has a plan it prefers over God’s. The self that says I know what is best for my life and I am going to hold the steering wheel thank you very much. That self has to be denied. Actively. Deliberately. As a choice.
Take up your cross. In the first century nobody heard the word cross and thought of jewelry. The cross was an instrument of execution. It was public, shameful, costly, and irreversible. When Jesus says take up your cross He is not talking about a minor inconvenience. He is talking about the death of something. The specific, intentional, sometimes painful death of your own agenda. And then daily. Not once. Not at a spiritual retreat when you feel particularly motivated. Daily. The surrender is not a one-time event. It is a daily practice. Every morning you wake up and the self wants to take the wheel again and the disciple makes the choice again: not my will, but Yours.
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The Hard Truth
Here is what most of us have been doing instead of surrender. We have been negotiating.
We come to God with our lives like a business deal. Lord I will surrender this area the one that is not that important to me anyway but this area over here, the relationship, the career, the dream, the thing I’ve built my identity around that one I am going to hold onto. We give God what is easy to release and wonder why the transformation is partial. Jesus didn’t say surrender the parts of yourself you don’t need anymore. He said deny yourself. The whole self. The plans, the preferences, the outcomes, the timelines all of it on the altar.
And I know what you’re thinking. What if He takes something I can’t live without?
Abraham thought the same thing on the mountain with Isaac. He put his son his most beloved, most irreplaceable, the promise of God himself made flesh on the altar. And at the last moment God stopped him and said: “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” God was not after Isaac. He was after Abraham’s grip on Isaac. The surrender was not about the son it was about the trust. Would Abraham trust God enough to open his hands completely around the thing he loved most?
God is not after what you’re holding. He is after your grip. He is after the trust that says I believe You are good enough and faithful enough that I can open my hands around even this.
What Surrender Actually Produces
I want to tell you what happens on the other side of genuine surrender because most people stop before they find out. Jesus said in the very next verse: “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.”
The person who grips their life who holds their plans and preferences and outcomes in clenched fists loses it. Not in the dramatic sense. In the slow, quiet, nobody-notices sense of a life that is technically functioning but not actually alive. A life being managed instead of lived. The person who surrenders it who opens their hands around everything, who says Lord take what You need to take and give what You want to give and lead me where You want to lead me finds it. Saves it. Discovers the life they were trying to build by themselves was a smaller version of the one God had waiting on the other side of the open hand.
Every person who has genuinely surrendered says the same thing. Not that it was easy. Not that the surrender cost nothing. That what they found on the other side was more than what they gave up. Every time. Because God is not trying to impoverish you. He is trying to give you back your life the real one, the full one, the one your clenched fists were blocking you from receiving.
The Call
I want to close with a simple, honest, practical invitation. Whatever you have been holding back from God the specific thing, the one you thought about when I said we negotiate I want to invite you to open your hand around it this morning.
Not because it won’t be hard. It will. Not because the surrender won’t cost you something. It might. But because the God you are surrendering to is good. And faithful. And has never once taken something from an open hand without giving something better in return. Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Him.
Not once. Daily. Starting today. The life you’ve been trying to build by holding on is waiting for you on the other side of letting go. Open your hands.
Reflection Questions
What specific thing have you been holding back from God in the negotiation the area you have not fully surrendered?
What is the fear underneath the holding on? Is that fear based in truth about who God is or in something else?
What would daily surrender look like in the most practical, specific terms of your actual life this week?
Today’s Prayer:Lord I confess that my surrender has been partial. I have given You the easy things and held onto the important ones. Today I want to open my hands specifically, around the thing I’ve been gripping most tightly. I am scared of what full surrender means. But I choose to trust that You are good enough to be trusted with everything. Take what You need. Give what You want. Lead me where You are going. Not my will but Yours. Starting today. Starting right now. Amen.
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