My husband shared something our second son said at the end of a Bible study him and both of our sons have been doing. As normal, I’ve been thinking on a it a few days and wanted to share.
In the past, when you made the decision to follow Christ, you said “I surrender my life to God”. These days it’s more often said “I commit my life to God”. But we can commit to many things…. but we can only surrender to one thing. We need to get back to saying I surrender.
So what really is the difference between the two words? Let’s look at some definitions of them.
Surrender:
- to yield something to the possession of power to another
- to give oneself up in to the power of another
- to give up, abandon, or relinquish
- to yield in favor of another
Commitment
- to pledge
- to bind or obligate
- to entrust for safekeeping
- to do, perform
- to engage oneself
Seems like a subtle difference however, to surrender you have to yield or give up all of yourself. That would seem to mean only one thing we can surrender too. All of oneself can only cover one thing. When we commit, we are actively doing something – pledging, entrusting, engaging. We can commit to doing so many things, especially in this “do it all” society. So in one, I am letting, in this case God, take over my life. Whereas, to commit I keep some of the authority since I get to choose if I want to do.
It seems that we can not commit without surrendering. It would lead to inconsistency in our walk with Christ. We could waver on the path he is choosing for us because we still think we have some authority. However when we surrender along with committing we can stay under his gentle guidance and be aligned with what he wants for us. Without surrendering we might be great Christians on Sunday morning, or with Christian friends, but in other situations we waver from that walk and say or do things we would never do.
But to surrender is where consistent Christ-like living occurs.
We need to surrender first. Yield oneself to the power and grace of the Lord. Surrender all we are and hope to become. Surrender our pain and our joys. Surrender our wills to the one who knows us better than we know ourselves.
Then we need to commitment second. Surrendering allows the Holy Spirit to work his power through you and away from working out things on our own. Surrender is a yielding to the Lord’s authority and then giving him our pledge to live as he would have us to live. Without surrender, commitment is empty and becomes a choice.
Each day, some times multiple times a day, we have to surrender again to God. It’s easy to slip away. As we study His word and spend quiet time with Him, each day it gets easier. Commitment then becomes easier. We begin to see that all things work for His glory and we can have hope in the despair because we have surrendered to him and he will be with us in the highs and the lows.
In the end, if we just commit to God and do not surrender I think of Paul as he talks about not running aimlessly or boxing with the air. That’s all we are doing. How can we follow Him and lead others to Christ without surrendering? Surrendering gives us self control so we do not get disqualified, but instead live a life fully for Christ.
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
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