Absolute Surrender

I seldom use some of E-Sword’s features, including the Topics section that can hold entire books like Andrew Murray’s Absolute Surrender, Spurgeon’s All of Grace, Finney’s Lectures to Professing Christians, and many, many more. But today I did begin reading Absolute Surrender and it is fabulous. Although the Bible must be the main source of all our Christian education, and can easily stand alone as the only source, God has also given us the writings of other Christians. This is one of His many gifts to us; open it up and use it! Especially when so much of it is free, as are these books and others in E-Sword. First, get E-Sword, then start downloading all the nifty Extras including entire books.

We are blessed/cursed to live in a time when so much is so convenient. The first time that I found out, from an African missionary who visited my church, that they pray for us in our abundance, I was shocked. Don’t we pray for them in their poverty? Why should we need prayer, when we have it all? When he saw the perplexed look on my face, he explained that they have less, and therefore are distracted by less, whereas American Christians are beseiged at every turn by… everything. Some neutral item like an inoffensive TV show is still taking time away from God. Now and then, such things are fine, but our daily routines typically fit in a lot more TV time than God-time. It’s rather like we live on a diet of Snickers and Big Macs, and occasionally have a good meal of grilled steak and salad. Actually, that illustrates my actual diet almost as well as my spiritual diet. So while the Bible is of course the steak, these other resources are at least as beneficial as salad, and E-Sword can be the source of both. And if we don’t surrender these pale, superficial pleasures, and stop eating the junk food, how will we have room in our lives for “the good stuff?” Even though I generally hate email forwards, the story of The Pearls is a good illustration of letting go of something in faith and recieving something much better.

I think you should read Absolute Surrender through E-Sword, where it’s free and immediately available. But if you have problems reading on the computer screen for extended periods, by all means get the paper version.

Murray says, “A life of absolute surrender has its difficulties. I do not deny that. Yes, it has something far more than difficulties: it is a life that with men is absolutely impossible. But by the grace of God, by the power of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, it is a life to which we are destined, and a life that is possible for us, praise God! Let us believe that God will maintain it. George Muller [said what] he believed to be the secret of his happiness, and of all the blessing which God had given him… there were two reasons. The one was that he had been enabled by grace to maintain a good conscience before God day by day; the other was, that he was a lover of God’s Word. Ah, yes, a good conscience is complete obedience to God day by day, and fellowship with God every day in His Word, and prayer - that is a life of absolute surrender… Such a life has two sides - on the one side, absolute surrender to work what God wants you to do; on the other side, to let God work what He wants to do. Give up yourselves absolutely to the will of God. You know something of that will; not enough, far from all. But say absolutely to the Lord God: “By Thy grace I desire to do Thy will in everything, every moment of every day.” Say: “Lord God, not a word upon my tongue but for Thy glory, not a movement of my temper but for Thy glory, not an affection of love or hate in my heart but for Thy glory, and according to Thy blessed will.” … Let us bow before God in humility, and in that humility confess before Him the state of the whole Church. No words can tell the sad state of the Church of Christ on earth. I wish I had words to speak what I sometimes feel about it. just think of the Christians around you. I do not speak of nominal Christians, or of professing Christians, but I speak of hundreds and thousands of honest, earnest Christians who are not living a life in the power of God or to His glory. So little power, so little devotion or consecration to God, so little perception of the truth that a Christian is a man utterly surrendered to God’s will! … How much Christian work is being done in the spirit of the flesh and in the power of self! How much work, day by day, in which human energy - our will and our thoughts about the work - is continually manifested, and in which there is but little of waiting upon God, and upon the power of the Holy Ghost! Let us make confession. But as we confess the state of the Church and the feebleness and sinfulness of work for God among us, let us come back to ourselves. Who is there who truly longs to be delivered from the power of the self-life, who truly acknowledges that it is the power of self and the flesh, and who is willing to cast all at the feet of Christ? There is deliverance… Come and cast this self-life and flesh-life at the feet of Jesus. Then trust Him. Do not worry yourselves with trying to understand all about it, but come in the living faith that Christ will come into you with the power of His death and the power of His life; and then the Holy Spirit will bring the whole Christ - Christ crucified and risen and living in glory - into your heart.”

“But call to memory the former days, in which (after you were illuminated) you endured a great fight of afflictions, indeed being exposed both by reproaches and afflictions, and while you became companions of those who lived so. For you both sympathized with my bonds and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that you have in Heaven a better and an enduring substance. Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great recompense of reward. For you have need of patience, so that after you have done the will of God you might receive the promise. For “yet a little while, and He who shall come will come and will not delay.” Now, “the Just shall live by faith. But if he draws back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him.” But we are not of those withdrawing to destruction, but of those who believe to the preserving of the soul. ” (Hebrews 10:32-39 MKJV)

Surrendering to the living God may result in the short term pain of giving up our illusions of control, but if we don’t draw back, if we throw ourselves wholeheartedly into a life of service to him - and the hard part of that life, here on earth, will last maybe 70 or 80 years if we’re “lucky” - will be followed by centuries, millenia, eternity of joy in Him. Not the empty “good works” service I’ve been engaging in for years, but the absolute surrender which is followed by His works performed through me. Oh yeah, it’s worth it. And I don’t even need the strength to actually give it up, just the strength to say, “By Thy grace I desire to do Thy will in everything, every moment of every day.” God is so good.