God desires to bless his children with good things. He is not simply wanting them to suffer and struggle. While submission and surrender are hard, they are a means to an end. The end is the glory of God, our hearts aligned with God’s heart, and a greater fullness of God’s blessings in our lives. Jesus endured the scorn of the cross and the surrender needed for the joy set before him and for the blessing of forgiveness and freedom for all of his followers. Likewise, the road to David’s journey of walking closely with God and living into the amazing and powerful calling of leading God’s people was a journey of surrender and submission.
Watch Andy Stanley’s series on David https://www.rightnowmedia.org/Content/Series/364929?episode=5
QUESTIONS
- What got your attention in today’s teaching?
- With all of David’s flaws, he never lost his confidence with God. Is there an area of life
that you feel or have felt forsaken? Unanswered prayer? Not so happy
circumstances? Life not seeming to get better? - What does surrender of “a good life on earth” look like?
- What does this look like in our own hearts, with our families, with our church, in our
jobs, in our mission, and beyond?
The Spiritual Practice of Surrendering All for Breakthrough
Surrender typically implies weakness, loss, and defeat. Can you actually gain something by giving up? Jesus said that the only way to truly live is to fully surrender your life to Him. Spiritual Power comes through the cross. Breakthrough involves a process that Jesus went through. It takes perseverance and struggle. It involves dying to self in every area of our lives: surrender to status, stuff, sin, and ourselves. It involves pain, but Jesus’ promise of “resurrection power” is worth it.
Philippians 3:10-11 says “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” That spiritual power comes through surrendering ourselves through the process of cross.
There are three stages through the cross: before the cross, on the cross, and after the cross. Before the cross “Please bless my agenda” On the cross “I submit to your agenda” After the cross “Your agenda is now my agenda”
This week, identify areas of surrender that move you closer to surrendering your whole life to God through
the power of the Holy Spirit.
- Write down any areas that your identity lies within that don’t align with having your identity in Jesus lone.
- Write down any relationships that are not surrendered to God.
- Write down any financial areas that have not been surrendered to God. Is your employment surrendered to what God desires for you?
- Is your schedule surrendered to God? Write down areas that have not been surrendered. Do you take a Sabbath every week?
- Write down plans, goals, or purposes that you are not sure have been surrendered to God.
Using your list, in prayer ask the Holy Spirit what area(s) that He desires to take you through the stages of the cross this week.
Share in your community an area that you are currently “before the cross or on the cross.” Pray for each other
in counting the cost of moving onto the cross or submitting to the actual pain on the cross as you surrender everything to Him.
Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
