“Never surrender. Never give up”. These are words that have been spoken by so many people, groups, teams, and armies that have usually found themselves in very difficult situations. In moments like this many have shown the dedication and willingness to truly give it all they had in order to achieve and overcome, even when nobody believed that they could do it. These people may have been referred to as the underdogs, but who doesn’t love a good underdog story, when the little guy overcomes incredible odds to be named the victor. In fact, many people in the United States have held onto this way of thinking since the foundation of our country. In many ways this “never surrender, never give up” mentality is in the DNA of our country. In general, as citizens of the United States, we do not like to surrender and we do not like to give up, but there is a form of surrender that we all need to embrace and there are a few things that we all need to remember.
In life, people have great power and can do some truly incredible things. Hard work and determination have helped people achieve things that others thought to be impossible, but we as humans are finite beings. We had a beginning and we will have an end (Genesis 2:7-23, Hebrews 9:27). We also have limitations. There are things we can do and things we cannot do. As human beings we need to surrender to this knowledge and surrender to the Infinite One that has no beginning nor end, and nothing is beyond His control. God is truly “the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end”(Revelation 21:6). He is the Creator (Genesis 1:1). He is the same God that spoke to Moses in Exodus 3:15. He is “I Am”. He exists by His own power. He is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent. We as finite beings need to understand our nature compared to the nature of God, and we need to surrender our lives to Him.
God, in His infinite power, wisdom, and love, created mankind with free will, and He has blessed us in so many ways. Everything that we have been able to do and accomplish was only done because of the power, strength, and knowledge that God has blessed us with. We are nothing and could have done nothing without Him. This same God that has blessed us in so many physical ways has more importantly blessed us by sending His Son to pay the price for our sins (John 3:16, 1 John 4:10). This was not something we could have done for ourselves. We all have sinned and therefore deserve death, but God has given us the gift of His Son (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23). It is through Christ and Christ alone that we can have salvation and the hope of heaven. But there is something we all need to do in order to have salvation and to truly have hope. We must surrrender.
In passages such as Hebrews 11:6, Romans 10:17, John 3:16, Luke 13:3, Matthew 10:32-33, Acts 2:38, and Revelation 2:10, we can see what we need to do to be saved. We must surrender to Him and His will. Our surrender to Him and His will is not just a one time act, but it is also a life-long commitment. In Luke 9:23 we read of our surrender and self-denial when Jesus said, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” As Christians we must recognize that our lives are not ours anymore. We have been “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). If we want to be pleasing to God we must surrender our all to Christ. So let us daily make our call and election sure and surrender our lives to Him (2 Peter 1:10-11).
Derek Broome