Surrender

Daily Reading: Genesis 24:12, 26-27; Luke 9

Then he said to the crowd, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your 

selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. Luke 9:23

Every day as I begin my morning reading I ask the Holy Spirit to speak to me from the passage, to open my heart to hear God’s voice in my life for this day. Usually as I read a passage something will jump out from the page at me that speaks powerfully to my heart. Today, in this chapter, packed full of powerful nuggets I was accosted by verse after verse. I watched Christ send out the 12 to begin to minister to the people and found myself asking if I was living as a faithful missionary to the people. I saw Christ feed the 5,000 people and witnessed how he taught the apostles to look for nourishment in deeper places than the food on hand. 

I listened to Jesus share twice the path which he had to take and saw that the disciples just didn't get it. And I witnessed Peter boldly declaring, “You are the Messiah sent from God!” (Luke 9:20) And, I asked myself, is Jesus still Messiah of your heart?  

Of all the powerful admonitions found in Luke chapter nine (I encourage you to read the whole chapter a couple of times through) there is one that always gets me. I’ve read it so many times and always to the same impact. In Luke 9:23 Jesus says to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.”  At one level it is such a clear announcement of the steps of discipleship, the steps of surrender to Christ, but at another deeper part of my being it ignites the war that rages between self-centeredness and surrender. Jesus declares that if I am to follow him that I need to surrender myself, not just once, but daily. He says that my life is not my own, its not all about Jim! There is something far more significant in this world than my own self care, I was created for something beyond myself. 

To take up a cross is literally to commit to walk down the path of death. It is to say, daily, that I am living for something else beyond me. Last week someone came up to me after church and asked if it gets easier to recite the Wesley Covenant Prayer, which is a prayer of complete surrender. I said no. The war rages within, yet I have learned day-after-day that when I surrender, when I take up my cross, this God who feeds 5,000 and who sends out disciples will feed me and use me. When I surrender my needs come into proper perspective and my life continues to experience joy and meaningfulness.  That’s why I, on most days, wake up to recite the Wesley Covenant Prayer and surrender my heart afresh to God for the day which he has laid out before me.

Lord, help me lay it all before you today, and tomorrow, and the day after that…  Amen.