A PRAYER OF SURRENDER
Have you ever told a child- “Because I said so”? Or how about- “You need to do it my way”? Anyone who has ever helped raise a child knows it’s sometimes difficult to explain the reason why the child must do something or can’t have something. Children often don’t ask for what is best for them, but they must learn to trust the parent or adult. As we come to God with our requests, we must trust Him also. For God is the “parent” and we are His children. It comes as a surprise to many people from what has been called the “selfie” generation that to follow Jesus means to give up our selfish desire and to seek first God’s kingdom (Matt. 6:33). We need to have God teach us to make our priority to pray for God’s Will to be done. Then we can approach prayer with humble submission to God’s Will.
Read Matthew 6:10-11a
Honoring the Lord when we pray opens the door for surrendering to Him. Jesus’ Model Prayer showed us the path from praise to submission as we approach our Father. It tells us to pray that His Will be done. This makes it a Prayer of Surrender. Jesus taught us to honor the Lord’s name as holy when we pray (6:9). Jesus intends for us to grow in Him as kingdom citizens and to make Him our highest priority. He knows that as we strive to live out His intention, we will face a serious temptation. When we give into temptation, we’ll neglect God’s kingdom. But we invite Christ into our lives, we become citizens of His kingdom.
The phrase in verse 10 “May your kingdom come” is a reference to God’s spiritual reign, not to Israel’s freedom from Rome. The eternal community in which God rules as king with complete authority over His people who have received His gift of salvation through Jesus Christ. God’s kingdom was announced in the covenant with Abraham (Matt. 8:11; Luke 1:26), is present in Christ’s reign in believers’ hearts (Luke 17:21) and will be complete when all evil is destroyed, and God establishes the new heaven and earth (Rev. 21:1). When we pray “May Your Will be done”, we are not resigning ourselves to fate but praying that God’s perfect purpose will be accomplished in this world as well as in the next. God accomplishes His Will largely through people willing to obey Him. This part of the prayer allows us to offer ourselves as doers of God’s Will, asking Him to guide, lead, and give us the means to accomplish His purposes.
Read James 4:6-10
James 4:6-10 is showing the need to be humble. There are three challenging things James tells us to do. He promises that these will change our lives. This passage from James was written in a very serious circumstance. Christians were quarreling; committing murder and adultery; living by lust, greed, and envy. They were making themselves enemies of God, denying the Spirit who dwelled in them, and embracing the world and its ill-gotten pleasures (James 4:1-5).
Having reprimanded them for this, James tells them, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6). Then James tells sinners three things they need to do. 1) Resist the devil (v. 7). 2) Draw near to God (v.8). 3) Humble yourselves (v. 10). James wipes the smiles off their faces: “You sinners, cleanse your hands. You double-minded purify your hearts. Be miserable and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to grieving, and your joy to gloom” (James 4:8-9). In the course of this rebuke, James offers these three things for those sinners to do, so as to revolutionize their lives and mend their relationship with God. We may not be in the fallen state those rebuked were in, but the three things are not reserved for apostates and reprobates. Even the best Christians ought to do these things, because they promise the avoidance of sin as much as they promise its rectification.
Now here is something wonderful. You can resist the devil. Did you realize you have that power? Well you do. The grace of God grants it to you —if you are humble about it (1Corinthians 10:12-13). The devil’s reaction may not be to scamper off immediately. He may tempt and try you a bit harder at first. But if you consistently resist him, he will fear the power of God in you, and he will flee. He may come back again another time, but he can’t win if you keep resisting him with the power God’s grace supplies you.
Here’s something more wonderful still. You can draw near to God. Did you realize that you have that privilege? Is it possible to be close to a God far away in heaven, “who dwells in unapproachable light” (1Timothy 6:15-16)? Well of course you cannot go into heaven (yet) and meet with God. James however mentions “the Spirit dwelling in us” (James 4:5). We have access to God through the Spirit (Ephesians 2:18) and “The Spirit intercedes for us” (Romans 8:26). So, we can draw near to God and be near him all the time —so long as we go to him humbly.
This is perhaps the most wonderful thing of all. God will exalt those who come to him humbly. Peter says the same (1Peter 5:6). Some translations say that God will “lift you up” but I’m inclined to think “exalt” is more what God has in mind. We come to God with no pretensions, seeking his grace, and he blesses us “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians 1:3), and grants us “his precious and magnificent promises” (2Peter 1:4).
Read James 4:13-17
James moves to a new application in giving a warning specifically about business forecasting. Somewhat unusually, he focuses first on the principle of trusting God. He opens with sobering words: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.’ Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. For you are a mist (vapor) that appears for a little while and then vanishes” (James 4:13–14). It might seem that James is condemning even short-term business planning. Planning ahead, however, is not his concern. Imagining that we are in control of what happens is the problem.
The following verse helps us see James’s real point: “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:15). The problem is not planning; it is planning as if the future lies in our hands. We are responsible to use wisely the resources, abilities, connections, and time that God gives us. But we are not in control of the outcomes. Most businesses are well aware how unpredictable outcomes are, despite the best planning and execution that money can buy. The annual report of any publicly traded corporation will feature a detailed section on risks the company faces, often running ten or twenty pages. Statements such as “Our stock price may fluctuate based on factors beyond our control” make it clear that secular corporations are highly attuned to the unpredictability James is talking about.
Why then does James have to remind believers of what ordinary businesses know so well? Perhaps believers sometimes delude themselves that following Christ will make them immune to the unpredictability of life and work. This is a mistake. Instead, James’s words should make Christians more aware of the need to continually reassess, adapt, and adjust. Our plans should be flexible and our execution responsive to changing conditions. In one sense, this is simply good business practice. Yet in a deeper sense, it is a spiritual matter, for we need to respond not only to market conditions but also to God’s leading in our work. This brings us back to James’s exhortation to listen with deep attention. Christian leadership consists not in forcing others to comply with our plans and actions, but in adapting ourselves to God’s word and God’s unfolding guidance in our lives.
“As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.” (v. 16). Boasting is evil because we are defying our utter ignorance of the true state of thing, turning a blind eye to the frailty of the fittest man and the fact that we depend upon God for everything. God wasn’t in Rodale’s thinking. There in that New York TV studio was a man who in one area of life had some knowledge, that is, of vitamins and healthy eating. He had one piece of the jigsaw and had become an authority in that single piece. But the other pieces? Such as length of life? And human unpredictability? And the divinely forged connection between sin and death? And the whole picture? He knew nothing at all about these things. The youngest child in the kingdom of God knew more than he did. John Calvin once observed, “Men arrogate too much to themselves when they think that they excel in anything.” James says baldly, “That is evil.” Not just the great cruel crimes that we read about too often. Yes, they are evil too, but boasting and bragging. Its source is the evil one. From the beginning he boasted what he could do for our first parents. He boasted to the Son of God that if he would fall down and worship him he would give him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. Every time you hear a man bragging, think of the pit. That is the source of all pride. Our boasting shows that we are sinful men. Then there is the other root problem.
Our Sins of Omission. v.17 “Therefore to him that know to do good, and do it not, to him it is sin.” We know the good we ought to do? Yes, because the things of the law are written in every heart. We know that it is wrong to lie and to steal and to kill and to worship an idol and to boast and brag. We know because God has given you a conscience – his great monitor that commends you when you do well and condemns you when you do wrong. The famous Puritan illustration of the conscience compares it to a sundial. That is, it operates effectively only when it is enlightened by the light that strikes it from the Bible. It will give us a reading if we shine our torch upon it. It will tell us a time but it is inaccurate, because it only works effectively by the light of the sun. So, our consciences will work best when they are illuminated by the Bible. Think of those who have the conscience of evil! They do it in conscience. Think of the conscience of the Auschwitz guards! They acted by the light of their conscience. Driving the Jews into the gas-chambers and going home to sing ‘Silent Night’ with the families at Christmas. Men can muffle and distort the voice of conscience.
James reminds us that we should be guided by what is good when we make our plans. What is good is the coming of God’s kingdom and our willingness to be submissive to His Will for us. Surrendering our plans to Him enables us to accomplish His kingdom plan for us each day. We sin when against God when we decide to take actions that reflect rebellion against Him. So, sin can also involve what we decide not to do. That is where “A Prayer of Surrender” comes in and is important to know God’s Will.
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