Christmas brings the beauty of a wholly surrendered life …

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What the church in America is now witnessing is the result of decades of selling and settling for a version of Christianity built around professions of faith rather than lives wholly and clearly surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Nevertheless, we can easily find ourselves “moved” in a worship service when we sing that old hymn written by Judson W. Van DeVenter (published in 1896) titled I Surrender All. The first verse goes like this:

All to Jesus, I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.
I surrender all, I surrender all,
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.

It’s much easier to live a life in which we profess to follow Jesus, but not fully surrender the entirety of our lives to everything it would mean to literally be surrendered to Christ. However, when we fail to surrender our entire lives to Jesus, all the troubles inherent in being human remain on our shoulders, a burden (and an indictment) we actually cannot bear. Bruce Larson writes in Believe and Belong about one way he would help people arrive at a decision to surrender their lives to Jesus:

    For many years I worked in New York City and counseled at my office any number of people who were wrestling with this yes-or-no decision. Often I would suggest they walk with me from my office down to the RCA Building on Fifth Avenue. In the entrance of that building is a gigantic statue of Atlas, a beautifully proportioned man who, with all his muscles straining, is holding the world upon his shoulders. There he is, the most powerfully built man in the world, and he can barely stand up under this burden.

    “Now that’s one way to live,” I would point out to my companion, “trying to carry the world on your shoulders. But now come across the street with me.”

    On the other side of Fifth Avenue is Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, and there behind the high altar is a little shrine of the boy Jesus, perhaps eight or nine years old, and with no effort he is holding the world in one hand. My point was illustrated graphically.

    “We have a choice. We can carry the world on our shoulders, or we can say, ‘I give up, Lord; here’s my life. I give you my world, the whole world,'”

We struggle with actually surrendering our lives to Jesus because doing some comes with great cost.

No one would know that better than Mary.

At that first Christmas, young Mary has her life disrupted by the angel Gabriel to a degree that would require total surrender on her part. God had selected her to be the mother of the Savior of the world, but how it would be carried out (a virgin birth) would make her the scandal of her family and her community, and upend her life in every way.

Her response?

“Mary responded, ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.’ And then the angel left her,” Luke 1:38.

With that statement, Mary in essence surrendered her life so that the Creator of all things could be born through her as a human being into the world He had previously spoken into existence.

With that statement, Mary was basically saying …

All to Jesus, I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live.
I surrender all, I surrender all,
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.

The incarnation coming out of the beauty of this surrendered young life would pave the way for God to provide humanity with the means of being reborn — a new birth that would transfer us out of the kingdom of darkness we find ourselves in and placing us in God’s kingdom of light:

“The one who is the true light, who gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn — not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God,” John 1:9-13.

“For he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins,” Colossians 1:13-14.

Have you surrendered the entirety of your life to Jesus? Can you join in singing, with all sincerity, this great message in song …

Scotty