Big Idea: What are you trying to control that God wants you to surrender?
Scripture: Matthew 19:16-30 Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?”
“Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”
“Which ones?” he inquired.
Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother,’ and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Peter answered him, “We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?”
Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first."
Devotion: There is much that can be said about longing for control and surrendering your control. In fact, we have hovered on this very idea for the past few days. The Lord may have put on your heart an area to give Him control of in your life. But today, I really want you to hone in on what the Lord is asking you to surrender. There is no better way to do that than to start with a prayer and a few Bible verses:
"So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God, and at the right time, He will lift you up in honor. Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you" (1 Peter 5:6-7 NLT).
Lord, I don’t know how much more I need to be humbled, but I know You’re working in all of this. Please help me be strong and aware enough to walk in humility before You. I know this requires a lot of patience on Your part, so I want to thank You for that ahead of time. I want to give this all over to You, but I even struggle with that sometimes. Help me surrender fully to You, O God. Help me to see what area of my life I am holding onto. When you do, help me to not get in the way of giving it over to You. Amen.
We often have good desires, and our heart many times is in the right place when it comes to seeking to glorify the Lord. We strive to follow His commands, do what is right, and spend time with Him. We can be just like the man in the story from Matthew 19 today. Jesus told him to keep the commandments, which the man said he had done. Then Jesus told him to sell all of his possessions and follow Him. This made the man upset because he had great wealth. Jesus was calling him to truly surrender and sacrifice everything.
Sometimes this story can be used to teach that you cannot have wealth and be a Christian. I don’t want you to read it that way, as that is not the point that Jesus was trying to make here. Instead, Jesus’s instruction to this man to sell all that he possessed shows that the man was in violation of the first commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). As R.C. Sproul put it, “He cannot bear to part with his wealth even for the sake of eternal life in the kingdom of God. What he lacks is the attitude that abandons everything (Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” Luke 16:24 ESV) to receive God’s unearned grace.”
We can have an attitude that abandons everything to fully embrace the grace that is freely offered to us through Jesus. That is what true surrender looks like. And anything that gets in the way of us doing so, we are called to give over. That isn’t always money, like in the story of the rich young man. It isn’t always an addiction or something bad. Sometimes the thing that we are making an idol of in our life, getting in the way of us fully embracing a life abiding in Christ, is a good thing with good intentions surrounding it. Nevertheless, we need to shift our desire from control, which is often all-consuming, to surrender. And when we do, we can enjoy God and a life in Him to the fullest.
Reflect:
- What are you trying to control that God wants you to surrender? What do you need to do to surrender it?
