Overcoming the Battlefield of Independence
By Terry Magee
There I was, scooping out a dish of ice cream, despite seeking God’s help earlier that day in managing my eating. I had prayed with all sincerity, declared God’s sovereignty over all things, and sought His companionship and strength. But my prayer was all but useless and powerless because I had not surrendered myself to God when I prayed regarding this matter.
We can praise God, confess our sins, maintain an attitude of thanksgiving, and take requests for ourselves and others to God, yet still cling to our independence. If we do not surrender to God, we lose the source of strength in our relationship with God. Our strength comes from an attitude of surrender, where we renounce our personal autonomy and declare our dependence on Him.
This attitude of surrender is difficult to adopt or maintain because the human heart goes its own way. The process of surrender can be likened to warfare, even trench warfare, where gains are slow. We struggle to surrender in three battlefield areas: our will, our desires, and our future.
Surrendering Our Will
The first area where we need to surrender is our will. This is a difficult task, but there is no use attempting to surrender in other areas until we get our wills under control. A willful spirit will sabotage other efforts until we tame it. We must recognize our individuality while at the same time turning over the control of our lives to God.
Jesus modeled the proper attitude of recognizing His will and still surrendering it to God. While praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, He acknowledged that He did not desire to go through the suffering that lay ahead of Him, which His human side wished to avoid, if possible. Yet, He fully surrendered Himself to God in saying, “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). The act of surrendering His will and embracing God’s will provided Jesus with strength in His ordeal of suffering and death.
When we pray, we must submit our wills to God’s will in order to pray the same way Jesus did. Even using Jesus’ same words will help so that we do not weaken our resolve or make our attitude of surrender conditional. Conditional surrender means no surrender because we are still master of our souls, dictating the terms of our surrender to God. The surrender of our wills must be unconditional.
Surrendering Our Desires
Just as we get a grip on submitting our wills to God, we get blindsided by our desires. Sometimes they are base, fleshly desires. Sometimes they are random distractions that invade our thoughts while we pray. Sometimes interruptions derail us and send us away from the fellowship we had been enjoying with God into a dark place where sin resides. We feel like Sisyphus, the Greek mythology figure who suffered the endless punishment of pushing an enormous boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down. We make progress as we trudge uphill, only to be flattened in a moment of weakness as sin rolls over us. We feel no kinship with the heroes of the Bible who apparently overcame their sinful desires with little effort.
Paul bursts that myth as he recounts his struggle against his sinful nature in Romans 7:14–25. We hear his frustration as he does the things he does not want to do while being unable to do the things he desires to do. He feels as if his body is at war with itself, and finally cries out in verse 24, “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”
Paul understood that his new nature in Christ was battling his old sinful nature, so the feelings of a war raging within were accurate. We can take heart that the struggle we face as we battle our old nature over obeying God is the very struggle that Paul faced.
When we pray, we must give our desires to God. We must maintain this attitude after we pray, so that we do not end our prayer and walk right into sin. We must also recognize that we are not alone in our struggle. Paul turned to Christ as His hope and strength in the midst of struggle—and so can we.
Fighting by ourselves against our old nature is draining, and we do not have the strength to carry on the fight indefinitely. God is all-powerful, and if we allow Him to take on the fight, we can find rest in Him. This does not mean we will not be aware of the struggle, and not experience the frustration of the battle of the desires within us. It means we have an ally and advocate ready to fight on our behalf. Our prayers need to get ourselves out of the way and let God carry on the fight for us.
Surrendering Our Future
Our third battlefield area of surrendering ourselves in prayer is our decision-making and actions. Isaiah modeled this in Isaiah 6:1–8. He experienced the glory of God on His throne with the angels surrounding Him and worshiping Him. Isaiah responded in despair that he was ruined “because I am a man of unclean lips.”
Then, an angel brings a coal to cleanse Isaiah’s lips, declaring that his sin has been atoned for. Following this intense spiritual experience, God asks, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Isaiah’s immediate response was, “Here am I. Send me!” Isaiah did not know where God wanted him to go or what God wanted him to say. All he knew was that God needed him for something, and at that stage, that was all Isaiah needed to know. Isaiah surrendered his future to God.
We all have dreams and plans for the future. Are these our own, or have we received them from God? During prayer, we must examine our hearts and discern whether we are seeking God’s direction and leading in our lives, or if we are seeking God’s blessing on our self-determined paths.
Recently, I experienced a season of unemployment due to work contracts being delayed or cancelled. During that time, I had to give my future to God, not knowing what my next job would be. Seeking God’s plan and direction over my own comfort and convenience became a daily part of my prayers.
In order to surrender our future to God in prayer, we must yield our dreams to Him for safekeeping. This does not mean that our dreams will never be fulfilled; it means that God is Lord over our plans.
Dying to Self Every Day We Live
Once we finish praying, how do we carry that attitude of surrender into our daily lives? The simplest answer is to follow Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:1 to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.” What does it mean to be a “living sacrifice”?
Each day, we present ourselves to God for service. We need to give every moment we live over to God. Does this mean we abandon all pleasure and rest? No, because those times and activities were ordained by God as well. It means that we make ourselves available for God’s service every day.
It might mean getting involved in a deep conversation or ministry at work. It might mean doing hard parenting tasks. It might mean living our lives quietly as an example of obedience to God to the world. Some days will not look any different from our original plans, just sanctified and dedicated to God. Other days might look dramatically different as God intervenes and presents special ministry opportunities.
The best way to maintain this attitude of surrender is through continual prayer. Enoch was in such constant fellowship with God. The Bible tells us he “walked with God.” Paul repeats that principle when he exhorts us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “pray continually.” So we have a positive cycle in which prayer begets an attitude of surrender, which begets more obedience, which in turn begets closer fellowship with God, and ultimately begets more continual prayer.
Each day, we decide whether we surrender to God or set out on our own path. We learn, slowly at times, to trust God’s way. This reinforces a further attitude of surrender. We must maintain diligence because our sin nature is always ready to assert itself, making it necessary to continually surrender to God through prayer.
TERRY MAGEE is the author of In the Grip of Prayer. He is a teacher in his church and writes a blog. You can contact him at terrymagee.net.
