Surrender: Access to Joy

A concept that Jesus has been pressing on my soul lately is the concept of true surrender. A picture He has used to illustrate to me what this really looks like is found in John 12. Mary had a bottle of perfume, and it was worth a year’s wages. This would be around $50,000 today. A word connected with “spikenard” isn’t translated into our English Bibles, and it’s pistikos. This word means “object of faith.” This little bottle of extremely costly perfume was the object of Mary’s faith. She had security because she had this perfume. She had something to fall back on. However, what did Mary do with this little perfume?

She lavishly spent it on Jesus, pouring it out at His feet. This action showed that Jesus was worth more to her than anything, no matter how much security or pleasure it brought. The same question faces us today. Mark 8: 34 commands us to take up our crosses, deny ourselves, and follow Him. When Jesus first called Peter and Andrew to him in Matthew 4: 18-20, they didn’t hesitate about following Him. They simply left all that they had ever known and followed. Then, in I Kings 19: 19-21, Elijah, the prophet of God, recruits Elisha. At first, Elisha wants to go back and kiss his father and mother. However, he returns and kills the oxen he had previously been tending, demonstrating that he would never return to his old way of living.

Are we willing to lay everything upon the altar? Jesus gave everything for us.  He asks for everything in return. The Christian life is not one in which we accept His forgiveness and now just get to go to heaven in the end. The Christian life is one in which we give up everything in radical and complete abandon to Jesus. There is no such thing as a “super Christian,” who has given up everything and is passionate about Jesus Christ, while every other “Christian” lives a normal, mediocre life, fitting in with the rest of the world with just slightly higher morals. Jesus asks us for everything. We must deny ourselves and die daily. This means that nothing we have belongs to us anymore. It’s all His.

Samuel Rutherford said this: “Some would have Christ cheap. They would have Him without the cross. But the price will not come down.”

Then, this summer while I was at Ellerslie, Nick Thompson said, “There is no such thing as a Christianity without a cross. There is no such thing as a Christianity without a cost. It costs everything.”

Though giving Jesus everything is hard, it’s also the only way to get true, lasting joy. He has brought me to a point in my life in which I honestly don’t desire to control my life. I don’t want to make my life decisions. I know that when I do, I only mess them up. He has far more beautiful and fulfilling plans for my life than I could ever concoct myself. So, I leave the choice in His hands. And, oh, what joy there is in complete surrender!

A very godly woman I know named Annie Wesche said, “I have found no adventure so great or joy so full as bringing death to my own life and living in His!”

Truly, a life of surrender is a life of the fullest joy!