Community News: 08/07/2024
In our culture, waving the white flag of surrender is a sign of weakness and defeat.
Jesus, however, tells us that surrender is the path to freedom and new life. In fact, Jesus told his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple, must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it” (Mt. 16:25).
This admittedly sounds so backwards to us. Lose your life in order to find it? Die to self in order to find your life in God? Surrender in order to find your strength? While it sounds counterintuitive to us, if you’ve spent anytime around Jesus, you know that this is often how He talks. This is His upside-down Kingdom.
The call to surrender, so central to Jesus’ own discipleship vision, is often missing in our own retellings of the gospel story. We celebrate Jesus as Savior, but tend the downplay the language of Jesus as Lord: obey, follow, surrender, take upon your cross, give your life. “In other words,” author Sandy Mason observes, “Jesus requires that I say “no” to myself so I can say “yes” to him and his leadership over my life. This will be a daily experience of surrendering or submitting to him (my cross) and following him.”
And yet, this is where we experience freedom. Surrender is step one in our journey to aligning with Jesus’ leading in your life. I believe that God meets us in this step of humility – where I admit that I cannot save or change myself and surrender to His will and ways – and it becomes the gateway towards becoming the person Jesus wants me to be.
We don’t experience spiritual transformation without surrender.
What if surrender isn’t just an essential step in our personal journey of transformation but is also an essential step in our church’s transformation into being the people Jesus calls us to be?
What would it look like to embrace this sort of surrender as a church?
Would you be willing to do it?
I’d love to hear your response to these question. Hit reply and let me know how you’re processing these questions.
Waving my White Flag of Surrender –
Pastor Brett
P.S. Don’t forget to join us for part 2 of Janet Logan and Becca Guerrero’s talk, “Spiritual Styles: Build A Lasting Bond With God For You And The Children You Love.” Friday Night (6:30pm) is a workshop style presentation (interactive, conversational), while Sunday morning (9:45am) will be a more sermon-style presentation. Either way, join us!
P.P.S. Take the Spiritual Styles survey before this weekend, so you’re equipped to put this weekend’s insights into practice: https://sec.naddocs.org/Forms/Spiritual-Styles-Guide
