I Surrender All

October 18, 2018 (Thursday)
In 1945, at the end of our war with Japan, America made clear to the Japanese leaders that nothing less than unconditional surrender would be acceptable. Japan, realizing that the war was lost, and America would accept only unconditional surrender, finally agreed to those terms. That was 73 years ago, and Japan has risen from the ashes of defeat to a strong position among the nations of the world. The surrender to America has been beneficial to our former enemy, now our friend.
We can compare Japan’s surrender to the United States of America to our own personal surrender to God, if indeed that is our position. We came to Jesus as the hymn says, “without one plea, but that His blood was shed for me, and that He invited me to come to Him.” We came just as we were, sinners in need of God’s grace. We made no demands upon Him; we submitted to His demand, unconditional surrender. And now, we are so glad we came to Him, holding nothing back, making no demands of Him, surrendering ourselves to Him.
And so we began our walk with the Lord. There would be trials and troubles because that’s just the way life is. There would be temptations, but we will have asked God to deliver us from them. Sometimes we would yield to a temptation, but we discovered that God’s forgiveness is complete and “if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If we grow rebellious and walk our own way, He reminds us of our unconditional surrender when we first met Him.
We have discovered that we have lost nothing worth keeping and gained everything when surrendering to Jesus. We love to sing, “He walks with me and talks with me and tells me I am His own.” We rejoice that we are forgiven. We are thankful for His grace.
If someone reading this is thinking about surrendering themselves to God who loves them, let me say to that person, do it! You’ll never be sorry you did. You will begin a new life in Him. It will be a joyous, peaceful life that you will have forever.