Surrendered to Jesus, or Negotiating?

 A young lady at an upscale department store perfume counter looked at a bottle of perfume and sniffed it. “I like this,” she said, ‘but I don’t want ‘Surrender.’ Do you have anything called ‘Negotiate’?” A primary definition of surrender is to give one’s self up to another. That latter definition gets close to the idea of what it means to be a follower of Christ. In the words of Jesus Himself in Luke 6:46, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do the things which I say?” There are many followers of Jesus who never really make a a full surrender to Jesus. They seek rather to "negotiate” with Him. They give some of themselves to Him, but not a full- scale, “none-of- self-and-all-of-Thee, I-surrender-all-to-Jesus ” kind of surrender. Instead they surrender enough to get into Christ (Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:27), but not enough for Christ to actually get into them and take over their lives (Galatians 2:20; 4:19; Colossians 1:27b). The result is a “Christian” who surrenders a little time, treasure, and talent but never really surrenders self.

 The apostle Paul is one of several personalities in the New Testament who truly surrendered to Jesus Christ. You can read about his dramatic conversion story in Acts chapters 9, 22, and 26. Suffice it to say his surrender was complete. He became, of course, the great apostle to the Gentiles, wrote much of the New Testament, and established churches all over the first century Mediterranean world. After he came to Christ he gave himself to telling everyone he could get to listen about the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Romans 1:1 he described himself this way – “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God.” The Greek word Paul used for “separated” has to do with setting boundaries. Paul’s life had a boundary around it. He was bound by his surrender to Jesus to give himself completely to the gospel and the great work of saving souls. To use terminology sometimes applied to athletics, Paul was “all in” with the gospel. And being “all in” compelled him to go “all out” all the time for lost people. I recently came across some fascinating and thought- provoking research by the Wall Street Journal that relates to our subject. About six years ago the Journal did a study of televised professional football games that revealed something remarkable. The average professional football game is three and one half hours long. That’s 210 minutes. But if you tally up the time the ball is actually in play, the action amounts to a mere 11 minutes. Meanwhile, commericals took up 63 minutes; shots of players standing around 67 minutes; shots of coaches, the crowd, cheerleaders, etc. 36 minutes; replays 15 minutes. Astoundingly, the ratio of inaction to action is 10 to 1! That’s the nature of football. Even so, surely we can still see an application. Many members and even many congregations of Christ’s church, sad to say, reflect a similar ratio of inaction to action as regards serving God and being surrendered to gospel acitivities, especially reaching out to lost people around us. We do a lot of “churchy” things–but how often are we talking gospel with people? None of us can be an apostle Paul, but if you would follow Jesus a surrender to Him as Lord is non-negotiable. A song teaches, “If you cannot sing like angels, If you cannot preach like Paul, You can tell the love of Jesus, And say He died for all.” Think about it.

 Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN