Going
With Jesus series #4
Luke
22:39-49
July
24, 2005
First
Presbyterian Church Carson City
Pastor
Bruce Kochsmeier
Purpose: For people
to experience that surrender is something we have to desire before it can really
happen and that in the desiring we become transformed.
For people to experience handles on the process of desiring surrender.
This is
really the only sermon I ever preach because until this is our attitude it
won’t be our behavior and until it is our behavior we are lost and apart from
God’s grace.
Surrender
has to be of everything that gets in the way of our going with Jesus.
The question is, do we really want to go with him?
Do we believe he loves us? Do
we believe going with him is really better than anything else life can offer? Do we believe this enough to let God show it to us?
Surrender
is more than a matter of the will. The
key is whether God has our heart, not our will, but God’s gift of willingness.
At the
core of surrender is being convinced of the depths of God’s love for us. We won’t surrender when we aren’t convinced that God
loves us and that God’s love is the most essential gift we can have.
When we think there is something better we won’t surrender.
When we think God’s love is not enough in and of itself we won’t
surrender.
This is
why our nation; our world is in so much trouble.
We don’t believe God’s love is enough.
As I mentioned last week Jesus saw just the opposite; the things of this
world weren’t enough and so he endured the cross for us to show us that
God’s love is the way.
Until we
see surrender to Jesus Christ as the greatest joy life can offer we will not do
it fully. Jesus showed us in the
garden what real surrender means. It
means death has no power over us. It
means that whatever we have to give up won’t matter because being loved by God
is more than enough.
Some
would say, “That’s not true. I’ve
lost out in life. God’s love
ISN’T enough.” Is that true? No one who has ever LET God’s love be enough has ever been
disappointed. No, our
disappointment is not with the sufficiency of God’s love.
Our disappointment is with our unwillingness to LET it be enough and to
wait for it.
Just
imagine with me what our lives would be like if we would surrender as Jesus did
the WHOLE of our lives to God’s love. Every
known compulsion would be defeated. Our
grip on material things would be released.
A new sanctuary would be built. We
would have time for what matters and no time for what doesn’t.
We would know the truth and promises of the Bible by heart.
We wouldn’t be angry. We
wouldn’t be afraid. We wouldn’t
be self-absorbed. Old wounds would
be healed. Old injuries would be
forgiven. Bitterness, loneliness,
anxiousness would cease to exist because we would have given them to Jesus to
hang on the cross. Our kids would
know the Gospel of Jesus Christ is more powerful than drugs or lust or money or
all the other empty promises they are tempted with.
Every day would be a good day. We
wouldn’t have stewardship campaigns or wonder about how to pay bills.
We would trust. We would
laugh. We would worship all the time because we would find JOY in it
– no matter how long the sermon was! All
our theological questions would be answered because our hearts belonged to the
one who IS the answer. Our
prayers would be praise more than petition.
When it came time to let go of another part of life or even life itself;
our own or that of one we love we would have hope because we would know that the
cross of surrender leads to joy and hope not misery and despair.
We’re
not there yet. But I want to be –
or at least I want to want to be. So
what is holding us back from believing that God’s love is enough?
What specifically do we need to be unburdened of so that we may follow
Jesus? It could be that we have
never let ourselves risk our hearts with God because we have been so burned by
the ways of the world. Isn’t that
just like us; to blame God for what the world has done; for what WE have done in
not simply trusting him? Jesus did
just the opposite. He trusted God
rather than blaming him. Jesus
risked his heart. He acknowledged
his humanness but then deferred to the Father because he knew he would be in
temptation if he didn’t. He let
God love him even when it loved for all the world like God was abandoning him.
Jesus needs to plow up some soil in our lives in order to plant his good
news but we have to take down the barbed wire fence this is holding him out.
We cave
in to a lot less than God’s love. We
cave in when it seems we won’t get as much as the world.
We cave in when it might cost too much in dollars and cents or time.
But to surrender in joy is to count it an opportunity to give away our
time and money for Jesus’ sake; for the sake of suffering with him; for the
sake of letting others see than we value nothing more than letting him have our
whole heart because in this we are whole.
When it
comes to this kind of surrender the world doesn’t have a clue and neither do
we in the Church much of the time. But
we need to because in true surrender that we are truly home.
Jesus shows us that defeat by the world’s standards, when given to God
leads to real victory.
We are
addicted to victory on our terms. And
this is why surrender is so hard. The
third step any person in a 12 step recovery program will tell you is the
toughest and that step is turning it over to God – surrendering.
But here
is where a song is so important: “Remember, surrender, remember the rest.
Remember the weight lifting off of your chest and realizing that it’s
not up to you; and it never was.”
Here is
the grace of surrender. To really
surrender is not up to us. It is a
gift of God’s pure grace and only when we have exhausted the world’s
treasures or become exhausted by them will we be open to this grace.
The
process of surrender means asking ourselves, “How is whatever it is I am
holding on to giving me more of life than what holding on to God can give me?”
There is
a joy in surrender that those who need the world’s victory will never know.
There is a joy in trusting God that we are invited to be transformed by
in letting go of our grip on all the stuff we either think we have to have or
that we have drug along with us to this point.
Jesus invites you to the garden to surrender.
Jesus went into the garden like us and with us, in the dark, but it was
through surrender that he came out in the light.
Are you in the dark? Surrender
to Jesus Christ and let the light come on.
D.L. Moody said it so well, “Spread out your petition
before God, and then say, ‘Thy will, not mine, be done.’ The sweetest lesson
I have learned in God's school is to let the Lord choose for me.”
Missionary
Jim Eliot once said, “One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which
is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.”
Jim Eliot surrendered his life telling people about the amazing love of
God in Jesus Christ.
It’s time for you and me to live this life. It’s time we live nothing less than joyful surrender to the
one who surrendered his life for us. May
we say every day, “Father, not my will, but yours” and may it be about
everything until everything we are is everything God has and all we have is
God’s great joy. Amen.