What Does It Mean to Surrender to God?
Imagine someone pointing a gun at you and telling you to put your hands up. What do you do?
You raise your hands and say, “I surrender.”
But surrender doesn’t end with putting your hands in the air. If the person tells you to step away from the car, you step away. If you’re told to get on the ground, you get on the ground. Once you’ve surrendered, you’ve given up your right to call the shots.
Obviously, God isn’t holding us at gunpoint. Biblical surrender isn’t something God forces us to do. We voluntarily surrender our lives to Him because we recognize who He is and trust Him.
Still, I think the illustration helps us understand something we’ve made far too complicated.
Biblical surrender means voluntarily giving God authority over your life and then living according to what He says.
That’s the part we sometimes leave out. We can sing I Surrender All, raise our hands during worship, make a profession of faith, get baptized, and tell everyone we’re following Jesus. But if our attitude afterward is, “I’ll decide for myself how I’m going to live,” have we really surrendered?
Jesus asked a painfully simple question:
“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things I say?” — Luke 6:46 (CSB)
That’s worth thinking about.
Surrender Means Someone Else Is in Charge
The word Lord doesn’t simply mean that Jesus is someone I admire. A lord has authority.
That’s where Christianity can become uncomfortable. We love the idea of Jesus as Savior because we need forgiveness, want grace, and look forward to eternal life. But Jesus is also Lord, which means I don’t get to accept His salvation while rejecting His authority over the rest of my life.
Jesus said:
“If you love me, you will keep my commands.” — John 14:15 (CSB)
He wasn’t teaching that we’re saved because we’re good enough at obeying Him. Scripture is clear that salvation is by God’s grace through faith, not something we earn through works.
Nor does surrender mean Christians suddenly become perfectly obedient. I certainly haven’t. We still sin, make terrible decisions, misunderstand things, and sometimes discover that we’ve wandered a long way from where God wants us.
The difference is what happens when God’s Word confronts us. A surrendered heart says, “If God says I’m wrong, then I’m wrong. I need to change.” An unsurrendered heart responds, “I know what God says, but I’m going to do what I want anyway.”
That’s a much harder definition of surrender than simply having an emotional moment during a worship service.
We Have a Surrender Problem
I think this is a major problem in Christianity today. We’re seeing people attend church, make professions of faith, get baptized, and identify themselves as Christians while apparently believing that following Jesus requires very little change in how they actually live.
We want Jesus involved in our eternity, but we’re not always sure we want Him involved in our relationships, sexuality, money, entertainment, career, priorities, attitudes, forgiveness, church involvement, or politics. In other words, we want a Savior without surrendering to a Lord.
Yet Christianity doesn’t give us the option of placing Jesus in one compartment of our lives while declaring everything else off-limits.
Paul wrote:
“Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.” — Romans 12:1 (CSB)
Notice what Paul tells us to present: ourselves.
Not an hour on Sunday morning, ten percent of our income, or only the parts of our lives we’re comfortable handing over. He calls us to present our lives.
That’s surrender.
The Problem With a Living Sacrifice
I’ve always found the phrase “living sacrifice” interesting. Under the Old Testament sacrificial system, an animal placed on the altar wasn’t getting back up and walking away.
We’re different because we’re alive, which means a living sacrifice has an unfortunate ability to crawl back off the altar.
I can surrender something to God on Sunday and be trying to take it back by Tuesday. One day I can pray, “God, Your will be done,” and then spend the next three days figuring out how to make sure my will gets done. Maybe you’ve done that too.
That’s why I don’t think surrender is simply a one-time emotional decision. There may be a moment when we genuinely surrender our lives to Christ, but living surrendered requires us to keep recognizing His authority.
Every area of my life ultimately comes back to the same question:
Who’s in charge here?
Why Wouldn’t We Ask God?
In the last post, we talked about prayer and why we should talk with our Heavenly Father. Think for a moment about who we’re talking to.
God created everything, so everything ultimately belongs to Him. He is sovereign over His creation, knows everything, and sees what we cannot see.
I can’t see tomorrow. I don’t know what will happen next year, and I don’t even know everything that’s going to happen this afternoon. God does.
So when I’m facing a decision, crisis, relationship problem, financial problem, career change, illness, family struggle, or something else I can’t understand, why wouldn’t I talk to the One who sees what I can’t?
That’s one of the reasons we pray.
But there’s another side to that relationship. If I’m willing to ask my Heavenly Father, “What should I do?”, shouldn’t I also be willing to trust what He tells me?
Otherwise, I’m not really seeking God’s direction. I’m seeking God’s endorsement of mine.
That’s not surrender.
Trusting God More Than I Trust Myself
Proverbs gives us some of the best-known words in Scripture about trusting God:
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.” — Proverbs 3:5–6 (CSB)
I’ve read those verses countless times. They’re much easier to put on a coffee mug than they are to live.
“Do not rely on your own understanding” doesn’t mean we stop thinking. God gave us brains, experience, wisdom, abilities, and people who can give us good counsel. The issue is which authority is final.
What happens when my reasoning says one thing and God’s Word clearly says another?
Who wins?
If I’ve surrendered, the answer has to be God.
Surrender Includes Church
Here’s where this gets practical.
It’s increasingly common to hear someone say something like, “I love Jesus. I just don’t need the church.” There’s a problem with that reasoning: God has already spoken about it.
Scripture tells believers:
“And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works, not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging each other, and all the more as you see the day approaching.” — Hebrews 10:24–25 (CSB)
The church isn’t perfect because it’s filled with people like you and me. Nevertheless, if I’ve surrendered my life to God, I don’t get to decide that fellowship with other believers is unnecessary when God says otherwise.
That’s what surrender looks like. I don’t obey only when I already agree.
Surrender Includes Politics Too
This is especially important in our Start at Home series because we’ve been talking about God’s blueprint for the individual, family, church, and government.
If Jesus is Lord of my life, He doesn’t stop being Lord when I enter the voting booth. My political party isn’t my highest authority, and neither is my favorite politician, news network, podcast host, social-media feed, family tradition, or the way I’ve voted for the last 40 years.
God’s Word is.
Scripture should shape how Christians think about human life, marriage, sexuality, justice, compassion, personal responsibility, government authority, care for our neighbors, religious freedom, honesty, morality, and every other issue it addresses.
That doesn’t mean Christians will agree on every political policy or candidate. Scripture doesn’t give us a party platform or tell us which box to check. Surrender does mean, however, that we don’t begin with, “What does my political side believe?”
We begin with, “What has God said?”
From there, we bring our political thinking into alignment with Scripture rather than trying to bring Scripture into alignment with our politics. Otherwise, we need to ask ourselves again: Who’s really in charge?
Then I Got Fired
I learned something about surrender during one of the most difficult transitions of my career.
For years, I had a professional goal: I wanted to become a Chief Technology Officer. Eventually, I accomplished it.
Then I got fired.
I lost a political battle inside the company, and it cost me my job. At the time, I was working around 70 hours a week. On top of that, my commute consumed another two or three hours every day.
I was worn out physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Pastor Josh Howerton has a line that describes that season of my life pretty well:
“When Satan can’t make you evil, he makes you busy.”
I was definitely busy.
Shortly after I was fired, one of my best friends came to my house. He also happened to be my doctor. He got right up in my face and told me something I wasn’t expecting: getting fired was one of the best things that could have happened to me.
He was concerned that if I continued living under that level of stress, I was eventually going to have a heart attack.
That’s not exactly how I was looking at unemployment at the time. But Wendy and I had a decision to make.
For Once, I Didn’t Immediately Try to Fix It
My entire career had been built around solving problems. That’s what IT people do. When something breaks, you figure out why. When there’s a problem, you develop a solution. If something isn’t working, you build a system that works.
As an executive, I was accustomed to analyzing situations, making decisions, putting people and resources in place, and driving toward an outcome. Getting fired created another problem, so my natural response would have been to immediately solve it by finding another executive job.
Instead, Wendy and I talked and prayed.
We went for a long drive and discussed what we should do next. Because I had received a good settlement and didn’t need to immediately return to work, we decided to do something that didn’t come naturally to me.
We waited.
School was almost out, which meant we could spend some time together seeking God’s direction. Wendy and I went away to a cabin for two days and spent those days in God’s Word.
We weren’t trying to convince God to give me another CTO position. Instead, we wanted to know what He wanted us to do.
That eventually led us to Pennsylvania, where we continued seeking God’s direction. For a period of time, we were spending two or three hours each day in Scripture and prayer.
Slowly, something became clear to me.
Maybe I Didn’t Want What I Thought I Wanted
I’d accomplished my lifelong professional goal. I’d become a CTO, but I realized I didn’t want to go back. Returning to corporate America and repeating the life I’d just been living no longer appealed to me.
As Wendy and I prayed, studied Scripture, and talked, I began thinking about what I would actually like to do. My perfect job suddenly looked very different.
Consulting appealed to me. I wanted to lead and train people while being able to work from wherever I lived instead of spending hours every day commuting.
There was another reason that flexibility mattered. My middle sister was nearing the end of her battle with cancer, and being away from corporate America gave me the opportunity to help care for her. God had provided the financial means for me to be there.
By the end of August, my sister’s battle with cancer was over. Jesus healed her in Heaven.
Then it was time for me to seriously begin looking for work.
Then My Phone Buzzed
One Wednesday morning, I was participating in a phone interview for a job when I received a text from a friend.
He and two other guys were starting a consulting company, and they needed somebody to manage and lead their consultants. Even better, I could live wherever I wanted.
Think about that for a moment: consulting, leading people, training people, and working from wherever I wanted.
It was remarkably close to the job I’d concluded would be ideal for the next chapter of my life. The following Monday, I met with my friend and accepted the job.
Surrender Was the Turning Point
I want to be careful about what I’m saying here because I’m not telling you that if you surrender something to God, He’ll reward you by giving you exactly what you want. That’s not biblical surrender.
Sometimes God’s answer is yes, while other times it’s no. There are also times when He leads us somewhere we never would have chosen ourselves.
Jesus demonstrated that in Gethsemane:
“Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me—nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” — Luke 22:42 (CSB)
Jesus expressed what He wanted and then surrendered to the Father’s will.
For me, surrender happened when the question stopped being, “God, help me replace the job I lost,” and became, “God, what do You want me to do next?”
In my particular situation, God eventually provided something remarkably close to what I’d realized I wanted. But I don’t believe I would have reached that conclusion if Wendy and I hadn’t stopped long enough to pray, open God’s Word, wait, and listen.
For once, instead of immediately trying to engineer the next outcome myself, I became willing to surrender the direction of my life to God.
Surrender Isn’t Doing Nothing
There’s another misunderstanding we need to avoid. Surrendering to God doesn’t mean sitting on the couch waiting for Him to send you an email explaining what to do next.
We still work, plan, seek wise counsel, make decisions, and use the abilities God has given us. What changes is the authority those things have in our lives.
Our plans come under God’s authority.
James warns us about confidently planning our future without recognizing God’s sovereignty:
“Instead, you should say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” — James 4:15 (CSB)
That’s surrender: I’m going to work hard, make wise decisions, and use the abilities God gave me, but ultimately, Father, Your will gets the final word.
Have You Actually Surrendered?
This is where the question becomes personal. It’s easy to say, “Jesus is Lord.” It’s much harder to live as though He actually is.
Maybe there’s an area of your life where you’ve essentially told God, You can have everything except this. It could be a relationship, your money, your career, your sexuality, a grudge you refuse to release, your church involvement, your politics, your plans for the future, or simply your determination to remain in control.
Whatever it is, surrender doesn’t mean you’ll never struggle with it again. Remember, we’re living sacrifices, and we have an annoying tendency to crawl back off the altar. What surrender does mean is settling the question of authority.
When my desires, opinions, politics, or plans conflict with what God has revealed, God gets the final word. Not because He’s holding a gun to my head, but because I’ve voluntarily raised my hands and said, “I surrender.”
If I really mean those words, then I have to be willing to follow where He leads.
Now We Take It Home
This closes the first part of the prescription we’ve been working through in the Start at Home series. We’ve talked about putting God at the center of our lives, allowing Scripture to change the way we think, communicating with our Heavenly Father through prayer, and now surrendering our lives to His authority.
None of those things were meant to remain private.
If God is changing me, eventually that change should affect the people who live with me, eat dinner with me, argue with me, watch how I respond when things go wrong, and know whether the faith I talk about on Sunday actually changes the way I live on Monday.
That’s where we’re going next. Because changing the world doesn’t start in Washington.
It starts at home.
Continue the Start at Home Journey
This post is part of our Start at Home series, where we’re looking at God’s blueprint for changing a broken world. That change doesn’t begin in Washington, in our churches, or with somebody else. It begins with us.
We’ve spent the last several posts looking at what it means to put God at the center, allow His Word to change the way we think, communicate with our Heavenly Father through prayer, and surrender our lives to His authority.
Now we’re taking that change home.
Read the complete Start at Home series and follow the journey from the beginning.
Listen to the Companion Podcast
Each blog post in the Start at Home series is paired with companion episodes of the Disciple Blueprint Podcast. The podcast continues the conversation and explores these biblical truths from a different angle.
Listen on your favorite major podcast platform or visit the Disciple Blueprint Podcast.
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The next step in the Start at Home journey is where surrender gets very practical: What happens when we take our faith home and begin living it in front of the people who know us best?
