Conditional Surrender***

The Holy One calls to me this morning.  Political correctness has become a suffocating blanket thrown over our truth denying nation.   Compromise abounds inside and outside the church as we process and form our opinions apart from God’s Word and pledge our allegiance to people not our Lord.  Truth calls out but the people ignore it and so truth fails. 

The Holy Spirit speaks His important reminder in these days of chaos and confusion, and He says,  

“You cannot pray about the conditional surrender of another until you have taken the steps to correct it within yourself.”

With a few words the Holy One speaks volumes then sets up my lesson for the day.  The Holy Spirit is my indwelling counselor who leads me into all truth.  Then He begins to show me how to apply the truth He reveals.  Whether the compromise is revealed in the big world of politics or the small world of my personal life, it boils down to how my heart and will is acting in “conditional surrender” to my Lord.

The lessons are always personal at the onset, so I must look at my own life first to understand the principles of Holiness and what lies within my heart and mind that the Lord wants me to see and change.  Here is when my thoughts shift from the political to the personal and I brace myself for what is about to be discussed. 

As a parent whose job it is to pray for my family of kids and their kids, the Lord takes me back to His prayer for the Disciples and also for those of us who follow Him today.  This was His parting prayer for them and us before He left planet earth and one that is still at the Throne of our Heavenly Father as we speak.

John 17:15-19, “I do not pray that you take them out of the world but that you should keep them from the evil one.  They are not of the world just as I am not of the world.  Sanctify them by Your truth.  As you have sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.    And for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified by the truth”. 

The Holy Spirit is the “Sanctifier”.  The truth sanctifies us…the truth sanctifies me.  Things start to get uncomfortable as the heat of our conversation begins to rise.  Jesus said that for “our sakes” He sanctified Himself, meaning that He was the first to surrender to the truth and complete obedience to the Word and Will of His Heavenly Father.   Holiness requires separation from worldly values and flesh dominated pursuits. 

As a Christian in this land of exile I understand my first loyalty must be to my Kingdom and my King.  The same is true in our family life.  

Jesus led in obedience and He rules through surrender to the authority of our Heavenly Father.   This speaks to the structure of Divine authority in all matters of life and today it really speaks to me.  

Bam!  Truth hits like a lightning bolt and I begin to see my own “conditional surrender” to my Father’s will. The prayer we all esteem and follow as our model speaks of complete surrender as we say and pray, to our Father in Heaven, “Thy kingdom come Thy will be done in earth as it is in Heaven”. 

I am struck at this moment with the thought of how many prayers have been lifted up as “MY will be done in earth”.  I understand it is not the petition themselves that are right or wrong, but rather my heart “attitude” in the prayers that the Lord seeks to change.

As a servant of the Most High, it is my role and privilege to serve my Lord’s will. A servant does not judge or manipulate the mission or the message even if the Master’s purpose is not clear to the servant at the time.  

Conditional surrender puts up a hand and says to the Lord, “You can have all of this BUT NOT …… or you can have every arena of my life EXCEPT …….. and we can all fill in the blanks.

My complete and unconditional surrender is challenged in my relationships and today we go deep into that place of hesitation.  The Lord takes me to Matt 10:34, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth.  I did not come to bring peace but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.”

From the entirety of that portion of scripture, we can read that our complete loyalty to Christ above all other relationships will be challenged.   If these closest heart relationships will be tested, how much more will a friendship with the world come under the Lord’s scrutiny?   

The Holy Spirit has been my companion and friend for years and years.  He has walked with me up the high mountains and through the deep valleys.    His counsel is always perfect when I look back over time, but His ways are mysterious and sometimes foreboding to my carnal thinking.   

Some of my questions have answers and the Lord is willing to provide them to my enquiring mind.  I see how conditional surrender sneaks past my Holiness radar when it involves loyalty to my kids or friends or even a political party when the principals and discipline of God’s word is being compromised.  God’s love provides mercy but His Holiness is uncompromising.

The hardest times come to me and involve my family and the Lord’s requirement to surrender all to Him. Conditional surrender is really a trust issue.  Do I want them happy or Holy if those are mutually exclusive?

Trusting that in the end God’s goodwill toward them is His perfect plan over them reveals His directive for me.  Trusting His purpose in what He allows that goes past my understanding of it, requires a deeper level of surrender, unconditional surrender.

As I pray for all of my beloveds to walk with the Lord and live in surrender to His Will, I recognize hypocrisy if I am not in the same unconditional surrender that I am praying that they be in.  I am sure every parent would agree that giving up a child to hard circumstances is harder than going through them ourselves.    

Trusting the Lord as a participant is different than trusting Him as an observer especially as it involves children who have grown up and away from my control as a parent.  The love and protective instincts are still in operation but I must defer them (in unconditional surrender) to the Lord Jesus Christ whose love for them is greater than even my own.  As deeply as I love them and hard as I might want to be, I am not their savior and I must surrender them unconditionally to the One Who is. 

My focus this morning begins to narrow and the range of thoughts bring me back to an understanding of the Lord’s word to me.  Sanctification is not for me alone but for the sake of those I love and have been privileged to lead. 

Conditional surrender is a blockade to Holiness and must be corrected in my own heart first before I can begin to pray (and expect) that it be corrected in theirs. 

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?