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Surrenders To The Call Of God
Dr. Floyd's first sermon from the series, "Big Faith."
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Over the next several weeks I want to talk to you Big Faith. Big Faith. In a moment I’m going to read from the 12th chapter of the book of Genesis, but before I do that, I want to make a very, very important statement that I hope will go deeply into your heart. And perhaps you will jot it down today, and you will commit to memorize it over days to come.
The statement is as follows: Big faith moments always move you to a new future with God. Big faith moments always move you to a new future with God. Big faith moments many times come in the midst of crisis, sometime in the midst of high success. At times when you flopped, and you fail. Many times when you transition you go into a new phase of work, or perhaps you’ve moved to a new region. But big faith moments God wants to always use to give you a new future with Him.
Now I want you to get a copy of God’s Word, and I want you to look with me to the 12th chapter of the book of Genesis today. And in honor of God’s Scripture, would you stand with me today as we read together from the Word of the Lord? Now before I read from Genesis 12, let me set for you the scene in Genesis.
In the first 2 chapters of Genesis, God gives to us His account of creation. Now listen carefully. Our church believes in biblical creation as stated in Genesis 1 and 2. And then in chapters 3 through chapter 11 of the book of Genesis we read about how man has fallen in the Garden of Eden. And all of a sudden he and the entire human race is spiraling deep toward downward trajectory that leads to evil and great sin. All of that led to the building of what is called in Genesis 11 as the Tower or Babel. But in the 12th chapter of Genesis, God’s saving arm stretches toward a man, and gives to him a future and a hope. And that man’s name is Abram. And today we’re going to read of what God did in that moment as he began to demonstrate faith, obedience, and worship of the Lord.
The Scripture says in the 12th chapter of the book of Genesis, “The Lord,” what did He do? “He said to Abram,” watch this, “Go out from your land, and relatives, and your father’s house to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and,” what happened? “He went, and Lot went with him. And Abram was,” how old? “75 years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, all of the possessions that they had accumulated, and the people had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. And when they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land and decided Shechem at the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. But the Lord appeared to Abram and said; “I will give this land to your offspring. So he built an alter there to the Lord who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an alter to the Lord and worshipped Him. And the Abram journey by stages to the Negev.”
Now Father I pray in the name of Jesus today that the Holy Spirit will teach us His Word, putting it deep into our souls, make us obedient. May we learn what surrender is all about. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Message number one in this series is entitled, “Big Faith: Surrenders to the Call of God.” That’s what I want to talk to you about today. About how big faith, when God gives you a moment, it surrenders to the call of God. Abram called, God called Abram to surrender to Him. What does it mean to surrender? Surrender occurs when you yield, or you surrender to the power of another person. It’s when you give up, and you surrender to the power of someone who is greater than you. That’s what surrender is really all about.
Surrender also occurs when you give up completely, when you are literally giving up completely, when you’re giving your all, arms outstretched to God, and you are giving up completely to the Lord.
I read a story in the last several days about events in 1945, following World War II in the country of Japan. Japan surrendered to the United States on September 2nd, 1945. But there were Japanese soldiers that were located in the isolated areas of Japan, who perhaps did not know, and even after they did know that their country had surrendered, they chose not to surrender, and they carried on warfare for as long as possible in those isolated areas of Japan.
One of the men that history talks about is a man named Hiroo Onada. Onada’s brother even came to him and appealed to him to surrender because the United States had won the war, and Japan has surrendered to the United States. However, he would not surrender. 29 years after the end of the war, and 15 years after he was declared legally dead in the country of Japan, Onada finally surrendered. He surrendered with deep weeping and grief knowing that his nation had lost the war.
Now when we hear that story, we think wow, that’s hard to believe. I can’t imagine that happening. But in all reality it happens in our lives pretty well everyday as many of us profess faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Years ago, we surrendered our lives to His saving power, and, and to let Him be Lord of our lives, but for some reason we really struggle to this day about surrendering to Him completely. And even though we signed up for lordship 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or longer, living like Jesus is Lord is pretty well vacant in most of our lives, and we’re just like those Japanese holdouts, those Japanese stragglers. We’re just spiritual stragglers, and spiritual holdouts trying to think about another way to follow Jesus that will not cost us everything.
Oh my friend I challenge you today to understand God is calling us to surrender to Him. It takes big faith to surrender to the call of God. Big faith is what God is doing in your life, and my life. And Genesis 12, verse 1 through 9 records about how Abram finally surrendered to the call of God, and God began to build in him in that big faith moment even greater faith. And this man becomes known as the father of faith because of the big faith that God did in him.
When we look at how big faith surrenders to the call of God, I want you to take note of a few things here today from Genesis 12, verse 1 through 9. First of all I want you to see that:
1. Big faith always is a call to leave the present. It is a call to leave the present. Notice what it says in verse number 1. “The Lord spoke to Abram and He said to Abram, ‘Go out.’” Those words go out mean to depart and go away from your land. Depart and leave your present to go to a new land in which I am going to show you. Now let me put it in simple terms what God’s expectation was of Abram so you can begin to get your heart around it.
Here’s what God said to him: Leave where you are. That’s what God told him. “Abram, leave where you are.” Now where was he? The Bible says he was in Haran in verse number 5 it talks about that. And God was calling him to Canaan. May I remind everyone here today he was 75 years of age? I want to say to every 75-year-old man here today, would you be willing to go to a new place if God wanted you to go? Would you be willing for God to do a new thing in your heart, in your life, even in your elder age? I pray you would.
But big faith moments always moves us to a new future with God. And this is exactly what happened years ago in the life of Abram. Just an observation for all of us to once again think through, as we think about the passage. God, God does not always call everyone to a new geographical location, but what does God do? God calls each of us to a new spiritual faith dimension. We cannot think that God’s going to call everyone to leave where we are to go to a new place geographically. He did that with Abram, but that doesn’t mean He’s going to do it to you. But what I do know He is going to do for each one of us is that He is going to call us to a new faith and spiritual dimension in life. And quite honestly, sometimes it would be easier to leave where you are to enter into that new faith dimension when you’re forced to, rather than to stay where you are, and still remain and be committed to a new faith dimension of what God is calling you to do.
A few moments ago I talked about the video showed us a story about a young man named Ryan Blackwell. His wife is Rachel, and they have a little son named Brady. Ryan grew up in our church in Springdale. He was saved, he was baptized, he was licensed to the ministry, he was ordained in the ministry. Went to Golden Gate Seminary in San Francisco for 3 years. We hired him back at Springdale 18 months ago, and we felt like we would have him 4 or 5 years from now, and then we would launch him out to plant a church somewhere in the world. But God does such a work in his heart while he was out there. When he was told about this opportunity that might come his way, he came to me and he said, “Pastor, I know that it hasn’t been very long, but, and I really feel bad about that, but I’m just telling you something’s going on here, and I can’t imagine them calling me, so, but he said we’re going to walk through. Is that okay?” Yes it’s okay. Go forward.
Ryan is 26 years of age. 26. And two Sundays from now he is becoming a pastor of the First Baptist Church in San Francisco, California, one of the most wicked and godless cities found anywhere in the world. In fact, Foreign Policy magazine said that San Francisco is the 12th most influential city anywhere in the entire world. Wow. And I guarantee you Ryan and Rachel’s greatest challenge will not be to move geographically. Now they might think it to be that today, but it’s really not. You see the call is much deeper. The challenge for them is that they will have to leave the familiar. They will have to leave the security. They will have to leave what they’re used to, and they’ve got to go to something that quite honestly, it’s one thing to go out there for 3 years and get a degree, but it’s another thing to go and sell your life there, and think about how God may leave you there all of your life to embrace that cross-cultural, multi-cultural, multi-nation city called San Francisco.
You know what that takes? Big faith. You know what I’m praying for? I’m praying that one of you on one of our campuses will buy their little house in Johnson, Arkansas, and free them from that challenge financially. There’s some of you that could buy that and not look back, not think a thing in the world about it. You say, “Well why should I?” Well, God may have not called you to go to San Francisco, but just think you’d have a mission opportunity unbelievable to free that young pastor. You say, “Well what’s he going to live in out there?” Well I’ll tell you what’s another part of that. He has a nice little house there in Johnson, Arkansas. And he and Rachel may never own their own house in San Francisco due to the economy. You know what they’re going to live in? A 2-bedroom apartment that’s going to cost them somewhere between 3 and 4000 dollars a month. That’s what the economic situation is in San Francisco. Get your arms around that.
The overall bottom line is this, is that God may not put the call of God on any of you to do what has been put on him, but I’ll tell you what God can do. God is wanting to move you into a new spiritual dimension in your life when you’re willing to leave your comfort zone, willing to leave that which you’re familiar with, stop holding on to the past, and understand that God is releasing you from the present to do a new thing, a new thing, a new thing in your life.
You see some of us need to really get our hearts around this statement: God’s call is not to safety, and security, but it’s to risk and big faith! If safety and security was Abram’s goal, he should have stayed where he was, but he risked it all. Hebrews 11 talks about Abraham. I love the way it talks about it because here’s what happened. It said in Hebrews 11 that Abraham, God called him to a land that he did not know where he was going. Interesting, isn’t it? I mean how many of you guys would like to go home and tell your wife, “Now honey we’re going to move.” Where are we moving? “Don’t know but we’re going.” Where are you going? “Don’t have any idea, here we go.” Now he had to go and talk to Mrs. Sarai about that. And I don’t imagine she was any different than any other woman in this congregation. But by faith God put it in his heart. By faith God put it in her heart. And by faith they launched into receiving a new spiritual dimension of life all because of big faith.
Let me ask you today, will you surrender to God’s call for your life of big faith? Big faith is a call not only to leave the present, but:
2. Big faith is also a call to something new. It’s a call to something new in your life. In the last part of verse 1, and the first part of verse number 2 it says that the same time God asked Abram to leave all of his loyalties, and then he promised to Abram more than Abram could ever even imagine. Can you imagine this? I will show you. I will make you a great nation. He was going to make him a great nation. And if you follow up Abram, whose name later was changed to Abraham because of a fresh work of God in his life, and all of his lineage, you will find, and you will discover that the people of God known as the people of Israel, their great, great, great, great, and whatever great it would be, grandfather, his name was Abraham.
You see, Abram came from the lineage of Eve. And Genesis chapter 3, verse number 15 promises to us that God is going to bring a seed from Eve that would save humanity from all sin. And you know what Abram’s salvation does? Abram’s salvation points us to the saving power of Jesus Christ that would take place on the cross of the Lord thousands of years later. What did Abram exchange? He exchanged Haran for Canaan. His present for something new. He exchanged security for risk, and he changed safety for big faith! And you know what? None of that makes sense. None of that adds up on the ledger. None of that, none of that feels good when God asks you to do something that you’re not used to doing.
It was Aristotle that taught us that we have five senses: touch, and taste, and see, and hear, and smell. But I suggest to you once you give your life to Jesus Christ, you don’t have 5 senses, you have 6 senses. And the 6th sense is the sense of faith. Faith! And I believe it is big faith! Both Ezekiel and Isaiah told us that God wanted to do a new thing in our lives. That God was calling us to do a new thing in our lives. But what is this something new? All I know is this: I said it earlier, and we’re going to say it again, and again, and again, over the next few weeks: Big faith always moves you to a new future with God. That doesn’t mean a new location. But it means a new future with God. Sometime it may have geographic ramifications, most of the time, in fact, all of the time, it will have dynamic, spiritual ramifications for your life.
What is this future right now for you? What is that new future? You say I like where I am. Well, many of you do. But I suggest to you today every one of us who want to walk with Christ; we need what I would call a holy dissatisfaction. A holy dissatisfaction that enough is not enough. That we want more of Him. We want more of His will. We want more of His way. We want, we want to be so in tune with Him that whatever the cost, we’re going to risk it all, and pay the price, and count the cost.
What is this new future for our church going to be? You say God’s going to give us a new future? Oh God’s going to give us a new future. With us, or without us, I’m telling you He’s building a new future and we’ve got to be willing to embrace that. We’ve got to be willing to see that. I don’t know where it’s all going, but I’m telling you, I’m excited about where’s it going, and I’m going with it wherever it’s going! Because I want to go on with God. What about you? What about you? What about you personally? What about you as a church? What about us as a family of God? What about you? Are you hear with me today? Are you alive and well, or wish you were dead?
You see big faith is a call to leave the present, and it’s a call to something new. But:
3. Big faith is also a call to be blessed and be a blessing. Do you realize God is called you to be blessed? And He’s called you to be a blessing? In the last part of verse 2, and all of verse 3, we learn that God blesses Abram because of his big faith. I will give you, and make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great. You will be a blessing, and whoever blesses you, I will bless them. Whoever curses you, I will curse them. And God is very serious about that. Oh I’m telling you today, the nation of Israel is still receiving the blessings of God, because God says He is going to bless them. And whoever blesses Israel, God is going to bless. Whoever curses Israel; there will be a day when they will be cursed. Are you listening to me? And all of that began with a big faith promise, and that promise has not, and will not ever change.
But there’s a spiritual observation I want you to come to me, and come with me today in this journey. Obedience to God always results in blessings. I mean when have you ever obeyed God when God didn’t bless you for your obedience? I’ve never known a time in my life when I didn’t obey God, didn’t matter if it took a little bit, or a big, or a lot, that He didn’t bless me because of it. Obedience always results in the blessings of God. Isn’t it amazing that we can think of a thousand reasons why we shouldn’t do something God wants us to do, and articulate those to people in all of our stupidity, and articulate them to ourselves, and give God a thousand reasons why I don’t need to launch out here and do this, or I don’t need to launch out here to this new, new moment that I possibly could have? No, we think a thousand reasons why we shouldn’t, but has it ever dawned on you how many blessings you missed because you’re not willing to pay the price to do what God wants you to do?
I mean there’s a leap out there we have to take, and faith is not a leap into the dark, but faith is a leap into the light. It’s a step of faith, one by one before the Lord. I’m going to give you a couple of things today, and I don’t want you to ever forget them in your life. Right them in the back of your Bible. Don’t forget them. And I want to tell you in this insecure, dysfunctional culture in which we have in this nation, many of us will not get what I’m about to tell, and what I’m about to say.
First of all:
(1) God wants to bless you. Can you imagine that? God wants to bless you. There are a lot of you struggle with that because you imagine God as being some old man upstairs. I hate that phrase, “upstairs.” The man upstairs. That tells me that God’s lost and perishing. You don’t refer to the Holy God as a man upstairs. He’s, first of all, He’s not a man; He’s a God man. And this God wants to bless you. Can you imagine this God up there; He’s got a long beard. He’s got a cane in His hand; you know to hit you every time you so even get close to stepping out of line. Boy what a healthy view. I’d like to have met your dad. He must have been one bad hombre. But I want to tell you that’s not what God is. God is loving. God is kind. God is faithful. And you know what? God wants to bless you.
There’s nothing I like to do for my children, and their wives, and our grandchildren more than bless them. In fact, I’ll just be honest with you. I like to bless people. If I get a chance to bless them, I want to bless them. If there’s something I can have that they can have that I can bless them, I mean that turns me on. That lights my jets man. That fires me up because I love to give. I love to bless other people. And my little only granddaughter, she doesn’t know it yet, but that’s going to benefit her greatly as soon as she figures out the gift of shopping. [LAUGHTER] Because you see, that’s part of the journey, is it not? Because we want to bless. So why would it surprise that if I want to do that as an earthly father, how much more the Heavenly Father wants to bless me? Bring it on Lord! Bless me!
But God not only wants to bless you:
(2) God wants you to bless others. God wants to use you to bless others. You say well I don’t know about all that. You see we often equate the blessing with something financial, or tangible, or material, and many times it is, but many times it’s not. You can bless people with a smile. Some of you ought to try it. You can bless people with a hug. You can bless them with what? With a note. With an email. You can bless them with a handwritten note which pretty well non exists in today’s culture, and you’re probably be burying them three days later because you sent it to them, but go ahead. I mean bless them! God wants to use you to bless other people! And you cannot bless others if God is not blessing you. And a lot of you don’t want to bless others because God is not blessing you, and God doesn’t bless you when you’re not being obedient to Him! And you’ve got to be willing to launch. You’ve got to be able to go to the new. You’ve got to be willing to leave the present. You just have to be willing! It’s not that God’s going to ask you to do it, but be willing. It’s not about holding on; it’s about letting go!
In fact, you can remember all that in this way: the blessed become a blessing. That’s simple to remember, is it not? The blessed become a blessing, and that’s what God wants you to be. I mean how many of you are blessed? All right, that’s a few of you. And I know that I didn’t ask for a show of hands, but I trust that all of you feel like you’ve been blessed. I hope you have. If you haven’t, then check it all out.
And there’s all level of blessing. We know that. But the blessed become a blessing. And so big faith calls me to leave my present. It calls me to a new future. It calls me to be blessed, and be a blessing, but:
4. Big faith is also this; it is a call to worship. That’s what big faith is. What a powerful statement. It’s a call to worship. In verse 7 and verse 8 God promised Abram. He said Abram I’m going to give you this land. It’s called Canaan land. The Promised Land, and I’m going to give it to your offspring. There were moments when I’m sure the offspring, when they were in Egypt wondering when the land was going to come. And then finally when God let them out of Egypt, for 40 years they fought among themselves. God had let a generation die off before God ever took them in. Amazing story. And now across the nations of the world, including America, we’re trying to tell Israel which part of their land is their land, and what they need to do with their land. I tell you what, Israel can decide to do whatever they want to do with their land, and the rest of the world can decide it, but you listen very carefully, whatever God’s land is for Israel, it will be the land. And He’ll take care of everything, and anybody in the way, accordingly He will fulfill His promise to the people of Israel.
You see, God blessed him because he obeyed, and because he surrendered. Those are two things that we struggle with: obeying God, surrender to God. That’s not easy to do. But all obedience is is what God says you do. And all surrender is is letting go to a greater, higher God than what you are in your own personal life. So what did Abram do when God did this with him? When he entered into a moment with God, and he embraced the call, and he began to move toward this new faith dimension, what did he do? Can you answer that question for me? What did he do?
Well let me tell you. He built an alter. That’s what he did. And he worshipped God. You didn’t worship without the alter. The alter led to the worship. That makes me ask a simple question I’d like to answer this morning. What is the alter? What is the alter? You know what the alter is? Let me put it this way. It’s:
(1) A place to meet with God. That’s what it is. When God so spoke to him, he wanted to worship God so he built a place, a small place. How big? Don’t know. It may have just been a couple of things that he put together, and it became significant monument unto the Lord that he was going to worship and meet with God there.
But also the alter is:
(2) A place to sacrifice to God. That’s what he did. He made a sacrifice to God. And may I say to you today, you cannot worship without sacrifice? There has to be the sacrifice of your life, the sacrifice of your future in order to truly worship God. And it was:
(3) A place to worship God. So think about the alter. A place to
meet with God, sacrifice to God, and worship God. We talk about coming to the alter during a public invitation. Do you know why? Because this alter is a place that we have built as a place where you meet with God. It’s a place where you sacrifice to God. It’s a place where you worship God.
A lot of folks have a lot of different opinions about what worship is. But you know what worship really is? Worship is our response to God for what He has done in our lives. That’s what worship is. And I don’t think we get our arms around that very well. All you’ve got to do is look at the average Sunday morning in the average church, our own church, people have their mouths closed while we worship. People’s minds are everywhere else in the world. People are just not here, even though they’re physically here. They’re not engaged. They’re watching, they’re being entertained in their mind. It’s not about them worshipping God; I’m here to watch a bunch of people worship, and I’m here to hear a guy who thinks he can lead, and preach, and I’m here to just kind of go through it. But that’s not what worship is.
Worship is my response to God. And if I’m not worshipping then that means I don’t really think a lot of God. Huh? Hello. Are you with me? So some of you think you’re too cool to sing. You just need to get your heart right, and your heart can’t help but sing. I challenge you today to understand that worship is responding to God for what God has done in your life.
You take the word surrender, what a powerful word. Do you realize that when we lift our hands to God that is a emblem of surrender? That’s what it really is. In fact, I believe one of the greatest illustrations is when a little, when a little child comes toward the parent, or the grandparent, and that little child runs, and that little child just holds his arms up, and all he wants to do is be lifted up by his daddy, or by his grandfather. Oh I tell you what, when my grandchildren, any one of them, when they run toward me, oh I tell you I just melt. It just makes me feel so good because you know what they’re doing? When they put their arms up, and they want Poppy to pick them up? You know what they’re doing? They’re surrendering to the control of someone who is stronger than them. That’s exactly what we do when we lift our hands to God.
But I want to challenge you today, you better be careful lifting your hands to God if you’re not willing to fully surrender to God. Because you’re living a lie if you do. Don’t be raising your hands in worship if you’re not willing to obey the Scripture concerning simple things of God. Don’t be raising your hands in worship if you’re not even willing to honor the Lord with the first tenth and additional offerings. You’re living a lie! Or you don’t know how to treat people. Or you’re mean to people! You better be real careful ladies and gentlemen, young people, be really careful and understand we’re talking about the purity of our heart. Lord, I need you. Lord, I surrender to you. I give myself in total control to You. Wow. That takes big faith. Amen? Big faith.
You do realize that the greatest story of surrender you find anywhere in the word is in the Bible? The greatest story of surrender ever in the history of humanity is when Jesus Christ, in the Garden of Gethsemane surrendered to the will of the Father, to go to the cross, and to die for the sins of the world. The greatest story of surrender. Tell me one bigger! Tell me one greater! Tell me one that’s more culture altering! Life-changing! World-changing! There is none!
One of my favorite places to go in Israel, and they never will let you stay as long as you’d like to stay, but it’s the Garden of Gethsemane. The Garden of Gethsemane is a holy place to me. That was really where Jesus died. Not physically, but to Himself once and for all. He lived a life that was totally dead unto Himself, but then in that life-altering moment, when He could have chosen not to die; He willfully gave Himself for all of the world, and He said not My will Father, but Your will be done.
My friends, I want you to know today that is the most powerful story of surrender found anywhere in the world. And if you have never surrendered your life to Jesus today, you need to surrender your life to Jesus. He surrendered to die on the cross so that you would surrender your life to Him! So He would save you from your sins, come in your life and give you a new future and a hope called heaven, one day. What a Jesus. And what a Savior.
More than a 125 years ago a man by the name of Hudson Taylor left his homeland and he went to China to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the country of China. It was in 1853 that Taylor said these words, and I quote today, “There can be no faith without risk.” There can be no faith without risk. What are you risking? What are you risking? Typical if we can’t control it, we don’t want to do it. But what are we risking? I challenge you today to risk it. I challenge you today to go to a level of faith that you’ve never been to before in your life. I challenge you today to embrace big faith! Big faith! Will you do it?
Today at our Springdale campus, 200 of our people gathering from both campuses who are going to be the launch team that’s going to launch into formulating, and launching our Fayetteville campus. Many of those people are from our congregation here at Pinnacle Hills, the majority of them from our Springdale congregation. But in all of that, at the end of this year, or the first part of 2011, we will launch them out there. And you know what they’ve had to do? They’ve had to take a risk. They’ve had to leave the comfort and security of where they are going to church, and they’re going to be a part of a new dream, a new vision, and risk it all, some of them would think. But the risk is worth it, and there is no faith without risk.
I close with this today. Let me introduce to you a man by the name of Judson W. DeVenter. It was in 1896 that he was in a major decision moment of his life. You see DeVenter was a carnival artist. He had developed his skill of the arts. And yet, while his career was ascending, he was really struggling. And you know what he was struggling with? In the height of his career? And the promise of this future that he was carving and creating, and charting for his own life? He felt that God might be calling him to do evangelistic work around the world! And here is ascending in his career, and he’s got this nagging urgency of the spirit of God in his life. And it was in the crucible of decision-making that one day, oh he was already saved, he’d already had his life changed by Jesus, but one day, I mean he really sold out. He risked it all. And he surrendered everything to Jesus.
In the amount of time, Judson said a song began to resonate in his heart he’d never heard before. This song kept coming up and swelling in the depths of my soul, and I never heard it before! But I started writing it down. And I started singing it. And you know what those words were?
All to Jesus I surrender;
Humbly at His feet I bow,
Worldly pleasure all forsaken;
Take me Jesus, take me now.
I surrender all,
I surrender all,
All to Thee, my Blessed Savior,
I surrender all.
Can I just be gut honest, and extremely blunt with you? I don’t even like it when we sing that song. I like the song. But I don’t like it when we sing it. Because when I’m up here and we sing that song, I see people can’t wait to get out of church. I see people leaving early. That’s not surrender. I see people who are just kind of lollygagging, oh god, let’s get this thing over with. I’ve got to get here or there for lunch. I see people that I know are living in immorality, making choices that are not right, and yet, with a big commitment, I surrender all.
Now I want to admit to you today that I’m not the judge. In fact, we’re going to sing it today, and that’s between you and God. But I want to tell you, what God wants from you in big faith is complete, total, 100% surrender.
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- MP3:
- http://www.ronniefloyd.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/2Z237L-Surrenders-to-the-Call-of-God.mp3
- Vimeo:
- 14929123