Important Lessons on the Road to Surrender

This past Sunday, I found inspiration to create a Surrender Tree and to cast all my cares on the Lord, as 1 Peter 5:7 recommends, knowing that He cares for me. However, there’s one thing I didn’t surrender. It’s something I never even thought to surrender.

Three days into my Surrender Tree work, I found myself tempted in this area of my life. And I fell into temptation. Hard. I’ve not fallen this way for years, so it took me by surprise. I repented as soon as I’d done it, but the days after that taught me several important spiritual lessons about surrender.

1. Satan can use whatever you don't surrender

Whatever it is you've not given over to Christ and surrendered to Him becomes an opportunity for Satan. He'll use your imagination to play with your emotions, heighten your doubts, strengthen your anxieties, and steal away the peace that comes from surrender. That doesn't mean he forces you to give into temptation. It's still your choice and your responsibility. It just means that he puts every pressure he can on that area of your life, increasing your likelihood of falling.

2. Once you've fallen, surrender becomes harder

The days before that fall, I found peace once I surrendered things. I stressed less and worried less. After that fall, though it lasted mere moments, surrender of anything became harder. I found myself needing to return to that surrender tree over and over again, reciting "Jesus, I trust in you" to battle my anxieties and worries over the present moment's troubles.

3. The harder surrender is, the more important it is

Every area of my life where surrender proved difficult pointed to an area of my life where my desires were out of alignment with God's will. That made surrender all the more important. The solution to the battle was to lay down arms, not pick them up again.

4. Confession provides the ultimate surrender

The purpose of confession is to surrender every failure to the One who can set things right again. Holding onto my mistakes and failures is a form of pride. Once I surrender my failures and mistakes and place them at the foot of Christ's cross, He can help me turn those failures and mistakes into useful instruments of salvation for other souls. He can provide me sacramental graces to strengthen me and release me from the fears and anxieties those failures and mistakes brought.

5. Surrender is a sign of strength and maturity

I grew up with a mindset that admitting to needs or owning my mistakes and failures was a sign of weakness. Weaknesses seemed dangerous. They left me open to others taking advantage of them. That led me to view surrender as a sign of failure, a revealing of weakness, and something to be avoided at all cost. It left me fighting every battle, no matter how small, as if my life depended upon it. That exhausted me.

It took years and years of God working with me to help me understand that perfection is a journey, not a destination. Surrender is no sign of weakness but a great sign of strength and maturity.

It takes strength to be vulnerable enough to let others see my faults, my flaws, my failures, and my mistakes. It takes maturity to recognize that I need help and to humble enough to ask for the help I need rather than pretend to have it all together.

6. Surrender doesn't mean He says "yes" to everything I want

Giving my desires, my worries, my anxieties, my concerns, and my fears to Him does not mean He gives me everything I want. It means He gets to decide how and when He answers me, how and when He shows up, and how, when, and what He provides. He may say "yes" to some things, and "no" to other things - even things I think are important or that I have set my heart upon getting. I must surrender my will in these things, trusting that what He does is for my best even if I don't understand it in that moment. That's the only way I receive the full measure of grace afforded me in the moment of His answer.

Growth Comes Through Surrender

I am not in charge of my life. God is. I am not in charge of the outcomes of my efforts. God is. The more that I let God take charge of my life and my outcomes, the more I grow closer to Him. The more I surrender, the more that I see His work being done in my life in big ways and small.

I see how His “no”, as disappointing as it was, prompted someone else to provide what I could not provide for myself so that a “yes” could be given to something else. By transferring things from my Surrender Tree to my Tree of Life, I’m starting to build a track record of our communication and a better understanding of how He operates.

I recognize that there’s power in surrender…and that the failure to surrender gives Satan power to operate in my life.  I am the only one who can decide whose power I’d rather be under – Christ’s, or Satan’s. I know that, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” – Joshua 24:15