What Does A Surrendered Life Look Like?
Lately, the question has been pressing on my heart: “What is surrender, and how can I live a surrendered life in a way that will leave a positive legacy for my children?” Probably the usual phrases come immediately to our minds, phrases like “laying down our own will,” “being a living sacrifice,” and “taking up our cross and following Him (Christ).” These are all well and good, scriptural, actually, and I mean in no way to undermine them, only to take a second look at what that means for us in our practical lives.
If you attend a Bible-believing church, you’re hopefully familiar with phrases like that. I find it easy, though, to smile, nod, and pat myself on the shoulder. The logic in my head goes something like: “I’m a baptized, church-going Christian, and I don’t do everything my flesh desires, therefore, I must be living a surrendered life. Cue the trumpets!”
Now, humor me for a moment, and join me in visualizing this scenario. There’s a table spread out in front of you, piled high with all the indulgent desserts the world has to offer. There’s dish after dish of decadent sweetness, dripping with chocolate and garnished with sugar, spun like golden threads. You walk by, righteously averting your eyes as you pass platters of cookies and tall, gooey layer cakes. “Tsk, tsk,” you cluck to yourself, “To think some people indulge in the likes of that. No self control! And so unsatisfying! I live a surrendered life!”
As you walk further, holding your still-empty plate, you notice the fruit pies. In the shadow of a glorious 3-tiered cake, you see an apple pie with an oatmeal crust that, really, looks almost healthy! You take a slice, consoling yourself with the fact that although there’s bound to be some sugar, you’ll also be getting some much needed fibre, so it might even out in the end. After the pies comes the ice cream. Every diet needs calcium, and wouldn’t that compliment the pie so well! You lay down self as you bypass the nearly empty butter pecan with scorn, humbly taking the first scoop of plain old vanilla. A good handful of candied almonds for protein, and a variety of chocolate-covered fruits round out your plate. You feel quite pleased with yourself as you look back on all the traps you avoided. What a sacrifice!
Let’s Reflect:
So, where did we go wrong? I want to point out a few mental and spiritual pitfalls that our character didn’t manage to avoid:
So often, we make choices in life based on what we think will hurt us the least from a given set of poor choices, like passing by the cakes, only to indulge in apple pie. We tell ourselves we’re mitigating the harm, and we shouldn’t be hurt badly. A better question to ask ourselves is, “Is this the best choice I can make?” Sometimes, we do ourselves a favour by leaving the buffet, and finding a grocery store where we can buy a real apple.
Another temptation we often face is to justify a choice we make for our own selfish desires by pointing to some good that could come of it. This is similar to the “ends justify the means” argument (which isn’t scriptural either.) This was demonstrated by our character focusing on the benefits of the fibre in the oatmeal, and the calcium in the ice cream, while choosing to ignore the obvious detriments of all the sugar! They weren’t making the decision based on the facts, rather, they had decided they were going to eat the pie and ice cream, and had to somehow convince themselves it was a good idea.
Making ourselves feel better about our own lives by comparing to someone else’s life choices that look worse, is another trap that’s so easy to fall into. Stacked up against all the iced-cake-and-cookie-eaters at the buffet, our pie nibbler doesn’t look so bad. Assessed at face value, though, we’d have to admit our character ended up with quite the plate full of sugar. Not a healthy choice, no matter who else ate more of worse things. Again, our goal needs to be to choose what’s best for ourselves, not only to stay a step ahead of our neighbour.
So often, we lose our focus in life. It’s easy to waste so much time trying to be good enough, that we lose sight of what God really wants for our lives. Christ is the pattern for our lives that we need to follow. He wants our eyes and hearts on Him, not constantly scanning the world around us to see whether any of the earthly pleasures that look so appealing could be justified in our lives. That’s not to say a life lived for Christ should be dull, in fact, it should be overflowing with peace, joy and contentment! The very nature of Christ manifests itself in our hearts and lives as we allow our souls to drink His water of everlasting life, and to rest in Him. THIS is the calling that we were created to fulfill. THIS is how we find true, lasting joy, and THIS is how we can discover the true peace of a life surrendered to Christ.
