surrender on Lordship

In The Lord of the Rings, Denethor is a steward of Gondor, the great kingdom of men. He comes from a long line of stewards who have ruled Gondor as temporary lords while the kingdom waited for the n...

In the days of the early church, believers affirmed their faith by saying, “Jesus is Lord.” We give lip-service to that same affirmation, but find it difficult to surrender control of our lives. Inste...

“A young man came to visit me with a question on his mind. He asked, “I prayed to receive Jesus as my Savior, but why has nothing really changed in my life?” I asked him, “Who is running your life?” H...

St. Anthony, the “father of monks,” is the best guide in our attempt to understand the role of solitude in ministry. Born around 251, Anthony was the son of Egyptian peasants. When he was about eighte...

King of kings and Lord of lords, today I am reminded of your preeminent sovereignty over all things, including me. Psalm 2 calls me to “kiss” you, to acknowledge your authority by submitting myself to...

There are many who say to the Lord, "I give myself wholly to Thee, without any reserve," but there are few who embrace the practice of this abandonment, which consists in receiving with a ce...

Gracious and loving God, you know the deep inner patterns of my life that keep me from being totally yours. You know the misformed structures of my being that hold me in bondage to something less than...

There is an old story of a king who went into the village streets to greet his subjects. A beggar sitting by the roadside eagerly held up his alms bowl, sure that the king would give handsomely. Inste...

I am a bow on your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break?

Surrender your poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you, and offers y...

God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.

Work and let him give the fruits therefore! Rule, and let him prosper it! Battle, and let him give victory! Preach, and let him make hearts devout!”

Lord—You are good and You are strong. You are faithful and You are loving. All that we have comes from Your hands: Hands that … hold us when we are weak, heal us when we’re wounded, protect us w...

Heavenly Father, Your love for us is so very evident. Everywhere we look, we see tangible proof of Your great care for us. Yet, when it comes to following You, we confess that we often don’t surrender...

Surrender—or “abandonment to divine providence,” as it is called in some of the older writings—is the central dynamic of the spiritual life, and retreat offers us many concrete opportunities for pract...

Taking up my "cross" means a life voluntarily surrendered to God.

What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights with us is so great! If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need...

One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime. Nor is surrender to the will of God (per se) adequate to fullness of power in Christ. Maturit...

Real self-conquest is the conquest of ourselves not by ourselves but by the Holy Spirit. Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves, we must become ourselves. For no...

We sometimes imagine surrender to God as emotional starvation. Every pleasure feels suspicious, and every passion feels in competition with our love of God. We think that the more miserable we are in ...

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca...

Lord, you have in fact searched us and known us. You know when we rest and when we rise, when we go out and come home. You know our inmost thoughts. And yet even so Lord, even so we turn our backs to ...

Maturation is a lifelong journey with different phases, human and spiritual. And it has many setbacks. What can be helpful is to have a grasp of the natural seasons of our lives and how these interfac...

Sometimes trust takes time. We all love to be in control, but when you start to give some of that up, it's freeing. Start with some of the little things. Give those things up to the Lord.

Mary was a nobody who became greater than everybody, simply because God came to her and she responded in the humblest possible way. She reasoned, she doubted, she surrendered, she connected with other...

The condition of an enlightened mind is a surrendered heart.

Bruce Larson had an unusual way of convincing people to turn their lives over to Jesus Christ.  When he was working in New York City, he would walk a man or woman downtown to the front of the RCA buil...

God gives where he finds empty hands.

Christian surrender is saying yes to God’s Yes! to me.