Absolute Surrender

Recently I found myself reading through an old book entitled Absolute Surrender written by Andrew Murray, a South African missionary of the 19th Century. In its pages I came across a passage that seemed to hammer home a point that the Lord has been laying upon my heart for some time now. The quote reads, “The cause of the weakness of your Christian life is that you want to work it out partly, and let God help you. And that cannot be.”
How often do we find ourselves trying to add to what He has already finished for us? Jesus’ call to the multitudes was “Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” What an assurance we have that in Him we do not have to strive for that which He has already accomplished. We do not have to strive for holiness, for we are holy in Him. We do not have to attempt to atone for our failures and shortcomings, for we are found blameless before God in Him. We have no need to worry about where our strength to stand will come from, for we are made strong in Him.
True faith realizes the helplessness of one’s self and utterly depends on Jesus Christ for everything. That quote hit me hard, for we often think that we need only turn to Him for the large problems that life may throw our way. However, it is only when we begin to surrender even the “smallest” situations and circumstances of our lives that God can begin to bring about a change in the large things. How are we to trust Him to move the mountain, if we believe it is within our power to move the hill? The answer, unfortunately, is that we will not.
I have nothing to offer before God. As Paul exclaimed some millennia ago, in my flesh no good thing dwells. The only answer to our problem is a change of life. We cannot walk in the flesh and please the Spirit. There has to be a complete denial of self, a crucifixion of the flesh, wherein the end result is as Paul said in his letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Our will cannot coexist with the will of God. Isaiah wrote that His ways our higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. We cannot contribute to this life in any way, shape, fashion, or form. The only life we can ever know is when, as Paul said, "live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
The call is a simple one: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” There is no life that can be more fulfilling and more joyful than that life that is completely found and has its source in Jesus Christ. But it comes at a cost. Are you willing enough to lose control of your life to find true life? Or are you so fearful and doubtful that you still cannot believe that all that you will ever need you will find the minute you lay down control, lay down your will and transfer ownership to the One who loved you so much that He gave up all, unto the death, so that we might know life? He is all you will ever need. It is up to each and every one of us, however, to believe it. And we will never know the life that He wants us to have in Him unless we surrender our will, our life, our all to Him. Only believe.