The Peace of Total Surrender to God

Brad Sullivan
Proper 8, Year A
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Emmanuel, Houston
Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42


The sacrifice of Isaac a kinda disturbing story when you really think about it: murder, human sacrifice, a father trying to kill his son. At seminary, I heard a lot of folks talk about their problems with the sacrifice of Isaac. Some folks just couldn’t even talk about the story, “It’s too terrible, it’s too terrible, I just can’t get past it, the murder...it’s just awful.”
Along those same lines, several months ago, I was watching an episode of the TV show, “Family Guy”, which referenced Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. For those of y’all who don’t know the show, “Family Guy”, well, you’re probably better off...but the show is a wonderfully irreverent cartoon, Sunday evenings on Fox, and in this particular episode, the dad in the show said, “Oh my God, I’m a worse father than Abraham.” Then, it cuts to a scene of Abraham and Isaac walking back down the mountain and Isaac saying, “Ok, what the hell was that all about?”
Obviously, the sacrifice of Isaac is a rather disturbing story: murder, human sacrifice, but when we take those aspects of the story out of the equation (we can address that during coffee hour) the sacrifice of Isaac is a story about total surrender to God. The one thing Abraham loved more than anything else, the one thing he couldn’t possibly give up, was his son, Isaac. God asked him to give up that one thing. Now, God didn’t want Abraham actually to kill Isaac, and Abraham got his one thing back, but he had to be willing to give it up. The assumption couldn’t be that he would get Isaac back; otherwise, he wouldn’t be surrendering to God. Abraham had to assume he was actually going to kill Isaac and never see him again.
What was going through Abraham’s mind? Did he think God had reneged on his previous promise to make him father to a multitude? Did he assume God would give him another son in order to fulfill his promise? We don’t know. All we know is Abraham totally surrendered himself to God.
Abraham trusted God in action. Not knowing how God could possibly fulfill his promise with Isaac dead, Abraham still trusted that he should do what God asked him to do.
Then, of course, we know how the story ends. In trusting God, Isaac was restored to Abraham. When we read this story, then, we learn a few things about God. For one thing, we learn that God doesn’t actually want us to kill our children so yea for that, we learn that God is worthy of our trust, and we also learn that if we truly want obtain the blessing God has in store for us, we have to be willing to surrender ourselves to God.
There’s a problem, though. Knowing that Abraham gets Isaac back, we might think, “Ok, God, I’ll surrender this to you knowing that you’re going to give it back.” We don’t know that God’s going to give back what we surrender. Maybe he would if he asked us to kill our child, but I think that was kind of a one time deal with Abraham. The thing or things which we need to surrender to God may not be something God is going to restore to us.
Say, for example, someone with a drug addiction is being asked by God to give up that drug addiction. God is not likely to say, “Thank you very much for being willing to give up your addiction to drugs. Now I know you trust me so please, keep on using drugs.” There are some things which God is asking us to give up which he won’t restore to us. Now, a drug addiction is obviously a good thing to surrender to God, but what about surrendering things which are not so obviously things which we need to surrender?
What about when God asks us to surrender our plans for the future? What if God asks us to surrender various hopes or dreams? What if God asks us to surrender a certain way of life or if God asks us to surrender a certain conviction we have? What if God asks us to surrender the one thing in our lives we cannot live without? Would we be willing to surrender that thing to God with the knowledge that we would not get it back?
That’s a difficult choice to make. “I can’t live without this God, but I’m going to surrender it to you?” God wouldn’t ask us to give something up just to be mean. If God’s asking us to give something up, he’s got something else in mind, something better in mind, Him. If we surrender to God, God fills us back up with himself.
Have you ever felt like you’re pushing against something for a long time, something that you want, and you keep trying, and you keep tying, and you keep trying, and it just isn’t working, or has there been something you want in your life or maybe something you want to accomplish and you’re miserable without it. Have you ever tried just giving it up, surrendering it to God and saying, “Ok, God, I give up, your turn. What blessing do you have in store for me?”
I saw a video on the internet, on YouTube last week called “Cardboard Testimonies.” The video was of a presentation at a church of people who had been transformed by Jesus. They held up cardboard signs stating who they were on one side, and who they became with Jesus’ help on the other side of the sign.
The cynic and pessimist in me wanted to say “come on…is your life really that great now? Are you just walking around with blinders on to the problems you’ve still got? What a bunch of bull.”
The Christ follower in me, however, said, “I want what they’ve got. How did they get to the point that they could identify exactly what Jesus had done to transform their lives?” Then, after reading over the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, I realized the people with these cardboard testimonies must have surrendered to Jesus.
There was a woman who was addicted to Meth, there were couples whose marriages were failing, there was a woman who had lived for eight years in fear that her cancer would return. She was cancer free, but she couldn’t let go of living in constant fear.
The Meth addict must have said, “Jesus, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t imagine my life without this drug, I can’t imagine how I’ll get by, but I’m miserable with it. I need to surrender this addiction to you, and trust you with the outcome.”
The couples whose marriages were failing must have said, “Jesus, our marriage isn’t good. Neither of us is willing to budge, we’re miserable together, this isn’t working so we’re surrendering it to you. Make our marriage what you want it to be. It may not be what we want, but we’re surrendering that to you. Make our marriage what you want.”
The lady who was afraid of cancer must have said, “Lord Jesus, I can’t live without this fear. It’s the only thing I’ve got. The only way my world makes sense, the only way I have the strength to keep going is through fear, but I also can’t keep living with this fear so I’m surrendering it to you. I don’t know how I’ll survive without this fear, but I’m surrendering that to you. I’ll trust you to guide me.”
This woman living with fear hits home with me particularly right now as I’m going through a similar period of surrender right now. Living with fear, with anxiety, depression, anger, all of that is something with which I’ve been struggling since I can remember. God knows where it came from. I don’t know why, but I’ve got a lot of fear, and I’ve known for a while that I take comfort in the fear and the assumption that things are gonna go wrong, but a couple of days ago, I was heading out, and we’d been talking at the youth conference I was attending about various kinds of death in our lives…not only physical death of friends and loved ones, but death of periods in our lives, or death of how we thought our lives should be, and the kids spent some time talking about how God helps bring resurrection from these various deaths.
So, as I was heading out one morning that week, I had a really dark outlook on things when I thought, “this is stupid, just assume everything’s gonna be great.” Well, I did assume everything was going to be great, and the instant I did so, I felt anxiety welling up inside, and I realized just how much I depended on fear and pessimism as a security blanket, kinda like Linus carrying around his little blue blanket. If I assumed things were going to go well, then I might be disappointed so it was safer to assume things would go badly. I wasn’t happy, but there was security in the fear.
I realized then I had to give that pessimism and fear to God. That anxiety and fear that I held on to for security, I had to give up to God, otherwise I could never find security in him. What I finally had to say was, “Ok, God, I give up. I can’t imagine living without the anger, and fear, and pessimism that I’ve held on to for so long, but rumor has it life’s gonna be better without it, the Bible seems to say life’d be better without it so I’m going to surrender it to you. Please help me to do so.”
The beauty of surrender to God is when we do surrender something to God, we find peace. For a couple days, I had this initial peace overflowing within me which was wonderful. Now, that initial peace didn’t last forever, but it was like a glimpse into the future, as if God was saying, “here’s what’s in store for you once you totally give this over to me and allow me to fill you up and you put your security in me.” So I got a glimpse into what life of total surrender to God can be like, and with his help I’m gonna keep chasing after it, because it’s like nothing else. As one of the youth described surrender at the conference where I was this week, she said life was serene.
So, my question for you this week is, is there something you need to surrender to God? Is there something you don’t have and are just miserable without it, or is there something you’ve got but that you know isn’t the right thing? Is there something in your life you just cannot live without, but you know having it is going against how God’s asking you to live or who God’s asking you to be? Try surrendering it to God. Give it up. God’s got something better in store for you. If God wants you to get rid of something, then it’s a good bet you can live without it, and it’s also a good bet you’ll be happier without it. So try it. Try experiencing the peace of surrender to God, and see what kind of life God has in store for you. Amen.