Surrender

He mocks proud mockers but gives grace to the humble. Proverbs 3:34

Believe it or not, when I hit my NIV Study Bible concordance which often helps me to look a lot more biblically literate than I truly am, I only found one verse on surrender; it was the verse from I Corinthians 13:3 about surrendering our bodies to the flames (By then, of course, we are hopefully dead.). I started thinking about surrender when one of my Christian Facebook friends wrote after her name, "surrenders". The more I contemplated surrender, the more questions, the more thoughts, the more insights came up from that simple yet powerful word. I thought about people who surrender during wartime, realizing the futility of their fight and hoping for the mercy of the enemy. I meditated on surrendering to God as a Christian and was faced by the many ramparts I have built to keep the enemy out, the many skirmishes I am still involved in, and by my inability to give God some of these areas of my life and realize that surrendering to the Ally is an ongoing process.  And I wonder just what it is in me that thinks that I know better, that it will be easier, that I will do a better job if I simply take on the battle myself. I made a public commitment to God when I was around 14, yet God has known me my whole life. Before I had a Name for the sudden peace, the sense of Presence in my life, God was there. I have seen God answer prayer and heal people simply because I asked. I have received financial help from God in unexpected ways when I was badly in need. I have had visions of Other Places that are dulled by the use of human words. I have felt the Presence of God so near that it seemed the air that I breathed. Yet in spite of all these things, in spite of knowing, feeling and even seeing God at work and knowing that Being in Him is simply the Best Place to Be, I continue my own wars. Amazingly what I am really seeking is the end of the war in its' antonym, peace. In reading my own words I realize that the place of surrender is not in simply using my own strength to stop doing things or to accept circumstances beyond my control, but to be in a place near enough to God knowing that in His Character He will not shoot me when my back is turned or torture me for information about the enemy that we can willingly surrender. What loss I bring to my own life when I think I gain by fighting a battle that God can win.