KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Surrender
I ONCE READ a parable about two armies...
One was 20,000 members strong, while the other was only half that size. The commander of the larger army sent an ambassador to his counterpart asking for surrender. The commander of the smaller army called for three men. To the first he said, “Fall on your sword.” The soldier immediately stuck the hilt of his weapon in the earth and impaled himself upon it. To the second the commander said, “Thrust yourself though with your spear.” The soldier immediately went to a nearby tree where he fixed the but end of his spear against the roots. He backed off a few steps and then ran himself through. The commander then turned to the third soldier and said, “Leap off that precipice.” The ambassador looked over the edge of the cliff to see the small thread-like shape of a river far below. The last soldier ran and jumped off the edge to be dashed on the rocks below. The commander then turned to the foreign ambassador and said, “I have 10,000 men who will, without hesitation, die for me like that. Tell your commander that I demand his surrender.” The ambassador hurried back and urged his commander to give up.
Surrender isn't a popular word in the English vocabulary. It implies loss and defeat. We want to be the master of our own destinies. We want to be the boss; to be in charge. We don’t like being told what to do. We don’t want anyone telling us how we ought to live our lives or run our households. We have trouble with passages in the Bible that mention concepts like submission, subjection and or obedience: “Wives submit to your own husbands…” (Eph. 5:22); “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities…” (Rom. 13:1); “Children, obey your parents…” (Eph. 6:1). Yet the call of the gospel is to surrender—to King Jesus. “That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that do has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation” (Rom. 10:9-10).
The dictionary says that “confess” means to acknowledge something fully and openly. We tend to think of confession in strictly verbal terms just prior to baptism. But in reality, confession is daily life-acknowledgement that Jesus is Lord of our lives. He is on the throne, He is in the driver’s seat, He is “calling the shots,” He is making the decisions. He is in control.
KneEmail: "Nevertheless even among the rulers many believed in Him, but because of the Pharisees they did not confess Him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue" ( John 12:42).