aggressive surrender

There are several generations of spiritual music that have included songs about surrendering to God. All my life, I have sung songs in church services like: “I Surrender All”, “Whatever it Takes”, “Lord I Give You my Heart”… My recollection is that in most cases, we sang but then just sat there. We were sincere but our music was not followed with action. The mentality seemed to be as long as we were saying the words, God would do the rest. We sang a nice melody but the words apparently were not heart-felt. It is as though we were saying, “Here I am God, I am available. If you want anything from me, let me know. Otherwise, I am going on with my life.”

It feels so spiritual to tell God how committed we are. Some leaders encourage people to make verbal commitments. At times, our worship services have, as a goal, an emotional response to the call of God to surrender to His will. We have glamorized verbal assent but under emphasized active submission.

How about if we begin to emphasize aggressive surrender? This is the concept of engaging in meaningful activity that expresses how surrendered we are. It is not words, it is action.

It is great to tell God that we are willing to do anything He wants, it is better to actually do something for Him. James said, “I will show you my faith by what I do.” (James 2:18)

If you are person of faith, go serve – somewhere, anywhere.
Give a day volunteering at your church.
Visit residents at a nearby nursing home.
Give a hand to a single parent.
Cut some grass, shovel some snow, clean some windows, serve a meal. There are a million ideas.
In fact, every place that there is a need, there is an opportunity for aggressive surrender.

When more of these needs are met, maybe I will feel like singing more of the “I’ll do anything you want me to do, God” songs.