A week or so before Christmas, we asked our kids what they wanted for Christmas. I expected to hear years worth of catching up in the toy department. This did not happen though.
Actually, this is what I heard...
..................ummmm..........hmmmm............uhhh........
Later that afternoon it struck me. I just witnessed someone who does not know how to accept very well. I ask what you want, you tell me what you will accept, and I will buy it.
This is usually how our gift giving goes.
But this day, we had little accepting. There was more tendency to surrender to an unproven benefactor, putting their trust in what we found best to give, rather than to accept our offer and dictate what would please them the most.
A consumer accepts. We as consumer accept. By definition, a consumer never surrenders.
We are called to surrender to God, but we find it more palatable to accept. To accept means that it is on my terms, in my time, on my mark.
To surrender is usually at the very last moment, that moment that just doesn't feel right. It could have never have felt good on any battlefield to hoist the white flag. I can imagine as the white flag is being hoisted in the air, officers, lieutenants, sergeants, and soldiers are all desperately thinking of a last ditch effort, some cunning ploy, some way out that will not lead into surrender.
Surrender is not a good feeling. Surrender is generally not a good option, and yet the only option. Many games of monopoly this Christmas break have taught me that it is not in my kids nature to surrender. 11pm, 12am, with a lonely Baltic Ave against the rest of the board, with hotels! We will not surrender!!
But surrender eventually we must. How much better to surrender now, and fall naturally to our knees after death, than to be forced to our knees in the next life. Imagine the horror.
Acceptance is a fleshly focal point. Surrender is a Holy focal point. Get the difference.
If you are sitting in a crowd or a room right now, look around. Of all the people in the room, one of you will be the next to die. It's not morbid, it's true. Who is next? Is it you? It could be.
Have you accepted? Or have you surrendered? Ask a person at work, a family member, or an enemy. Chances are you will get a truer answer.
“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of "accepting" Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshipping, seeking, singing Church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd.”
-A.W.Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Actually, this is what I heard...
..................ummmm..........hmmmm............uhhh........
Later that afternoon it struck me. I just witnessed someone who does not know how to accept very well. I ask what you want, you tell me what you will accept, and I will buy it.
This is usually how our gift giving goes.
But this day, we had little accepting. There was more tendency to surrender to an unproven benefactor, putting their trust in what we found best to give, rather than to accept our offer and dictate what would please them the most.
A consumer accepts. We as consumer accept. By definition, a consumer never surrenders.
We are called to surrender to God, but we find it more palatable to accept. To accept means that it is on my terms, in my time, on my mark.
To surrender is usually at the very last moment, that moment that just doesn't feel right. It could have never have felt good on any battlefield to hoist the white flag. I can imagine as the white flag is being hoisted in the air, officers, lieutenants, sergeants, and soldiers are all desperately thinking of a last ditch effort, some cunning ploy, some way out that will not lead into surrender.
Surrender is not a good feeling. Surrender is generally not a good option, and yet the only option. Many games of monopoly this Christmas break have taught me that it is not in my kids nature to surrender. 11pm, 12am, with a lonely Baltic Ave against the rest of the board, with hotels! We will not surrender!!
But surrender eventually we must. How much better to surrender now, and fall naturally to our knees after death, than to be forced to our knees in the next life. Imagine the horror.
Acceptance is a fleshly focal point. Surrender is a Holy focal point. Get the difference.
If you are sitting in a crowd or a room right now, look around. Of all the people in the room, one of you will be the next to die. It's not morbid, it's true. Who is next? Is it you? It could be.
Have you accepted? Or have you surrendered? Ask a person at work, a family member, or an enemy. Chances are you will get a truer answer.
“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of "accepting" Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshipping, seeking, singing Church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd.”
-A.W.Tozer, The Pursuit of God
White Flag-Chris Tomlin
http://youtu.be/9fL-TwKzkCk
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