An Act of Surrender
An Act of Surrender by Rev. L. John Gable
July 26, 2020
Our lesson from Acts this morning is one of the most familiar stories in all of Scripture. Even those who have only a passing knowledge of the Bible seem to know the story of Saul’s, hereafter known as Paul’s, conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
One summer a number of years ago I took a two week continuing education course on Scripture memorization. I thought I would be taught easy tricks to help me quickly memorize extensive passages of Scripture. It turns out there are no “easy tricks”, it is just plain hard work and takes discipline, but it was this passage which we read this morning which I chose for my memory verse as part of the final exam.
Certainly this is the most famous conversion story in history. While some may know of Chuck Colson’s conversion in prison, or of John Wesley’s heart being “strangely warmed” at Aldersgate or even of C.S. Lewis’ telling of how he was on a bus going to the zoo at Whipsnade one sunny morning. “When I set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did!” But, anyone who has been even a sometimes attender in worship or a Sunday School class knows the story of Paul’s conversion and could likely tell the story themselves almost verbatim.
The act of conversion is central to the understanding of the Christian faith, of what it means to be a Christian. It is the concept of turning to Christ, of being changed and “converted” by an encounter with the Living Lord. While not many I know have had as dramatic an experience as Paul’s I know many who can point to a specific time or place or event when they knew that they knew that they knew that Jesus really was alive and real. They refer to that as their “moment of conversion”. Even those who cannot point to a specific event, myself included, do seem to be able to speak in general terms of the act of turning, perhaps not in one momentous “AHA” moment, but in a series of events or experiences or decisions when they came to the dawning realization that Jesus really is the Son of God and so committed their lives to Him as Savior and submitted to Him as Lord.
Is one way of coming to faith better than the other? Is one way preferred or prescribed? No, the focus of conversion is not on the time or place, the ways or means, but on the act of turning itself and the new direction in which we are now heading. My pastor growing up, Dr. George Sweazey, in one of his books writes, “Conversion is not a leap as many call it. It is a turning, a facing toward Christ and then walking toward him.” For some, it may be a dramatic, momentous act of turning to God, and for others it is a process, a series of smaller turns to God in obedience, but in either case it is the turning to Christ that is essential. What takes place in an instant for some, takes a lifetime for others.
Regardless of it being a singular event or a gradual process the pattern of conversion is typically something like this:
First, there is a recognition that something is amiss within us, something we seem not to be able to fix on our own, that we are heading in the wrong direction, living in a way that is certainly not God-honoring and may well be self-destructive. For most, that realization is the first and necessary step in the process of conversion without which we rarely see any need for change.
The second step is an act of repentance, the Greek word is metanoia, from which we get the English word “metamorphosis”, which simply means the act of turning. We are walking one direction and we make the decision to turn around. We repent.
The third and final step requires us to make a decision: to whom or what do we turn? The central confession of the Christian faith is, “I turn to Jesus Christ.” Having walked away from God, I now repent, and turn walk toward God by faith in Jesus Christ.
We can hear this process in the three questions we ask at the time of adult baptism. “Trusting in the gracious mercy of God, do you repent of your sin and confess your need of forgiveness? Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept Him as your Lord and Savior, trusting in His grace and love? Will you be Christ’s faithful disciple, obeying His Word and showing His love?” In response to each of these we say, “I do and I will, with God’s help.”
Returning to our lesson, this story of Paul’s experience was so important to the early church that Luke repeats it three separate times in the book of Acts. He tells it though not to suggest that this is the template of conversion that all have to follow, so it may not be your story as it certainly is not mine, but it is Paul’s story and it is an important one for us to know because it speaks of the power God has to touch and change a life, then and now. No one of us, no matter who we are, where we’ve been or what we’ve done is beyond the reach of God’s saving love.
But as familiar as we are with this story, as many times as I have preached and taught on it, as many times as you have heard sermons and lessons on it, this time when I read this text I heard it in a strikingly new way, recall God’s Word is living and dynamic as God continues to speak and we continue to hear in new ways.
This time I heard the story not so much as Paul’s “conversion”, and certainly his not in any way following the prescribed three step process of conversion, but as his “total act of surrender”.
Saul, this young, rising star of a Pharisee, was a man on a mission coming off of the stoning of Stephen and his approval of it, now going out an capture followers of the Way, perhaps the earliest way followers of Jesus were described, as far away as Damascus (140 miles from Jerusalem, a week’s journey by foot), in order to “bring them bound” to Jerusalem for trial, imprisonment, even execution.
We are given no evidence of Saul’s thought-life, of his introspection on the mis-direction of his life or of his desire for repentance. Rather, he was struck down on the road and blinded by a flash of light from heaven that he didn’t see coming. As Southern author Flannery O’Connor writes, “I reckon the Lord knew that the only way to make a Christian out of that one was to knock him off his horse”, of course there is no evidence that he was even riding a horse, but her point is well taken. This was a dramatic, unexpected event.
In his state of blindness and confusion, Saul asks, “Who are you, Lord?” He knew it was Someone more powerful than he who had done this to him. And there he encountered Jesus Christ, the very One he was persecuting. Overpowered in every way by the Living Lord, Saul’s only response was an act of total surrender. That’s what we are witnessing here, Saul’s unconditional surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. William Temple speaks of conversion using this very image, when he writes, “At first or last there must be a sharp break, a conversion or new birth or else there must be a series of conversions, but there is a need for real discontinuity, a moment of self-surrender.”
I’m not sure exactly how I happened to come to my new reading/hearing of this story, but it may have been when I was watching a three part series on the History Channel about the life of Ulysses S. Grant several months ago. Prior to his serving as President, Grant was the masterful field general who led the Federal troops to the completion of the Civil War. Every time his troops captured a Southern contingent Grant would meet with the conquered general who invariably asked him for the “terms of surrender” and Grant was consistent in saying, “There are no terms – only unconditional surrender.” Unconditional Surrender. Some came to call U.S. Grant, “unconditional surrender Grant.”
Isn’t this what Jesus did to Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus? He overpowered him. There was no negotiation here, only a call for an unconditional surrender to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Friends, let me be plain in saying, when we have an encounter with Christ, when we turn to Him in faith, we aren’t in a position to negotiate the terms of our surrender to His Lordship. “OK, Lord, I’ll give you one hour on Sunday mornings, and another on any day of the week of Your choosing for a class or study or act of service. I’ll offer You up to 15 minutes a day for prayer and devotional reading, but in exchange I want to still maintain control over my calendar and my checkbook, over my thought-life and what I choose to do with whomever I choose to do it. I will let You in to my heart; I will let You love me and save me, but I still want to have control over what I do and how I do it. I love You, Jesus, but….”
No, that is not what it means to submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, rather He calls for “unconditional surrender”, a willingness to follow where He leads, to come when He says “Come”, to go when He says “Go”, and to do what He tells us to do. It is an openness to allow God to enter in to every aspect and decision of our lives and to shine His light in to every darkened corner of our hearts and minds, not so that He can call us out and make us feel guilty, but so that He can liberate us with His forgiveness and truly set us free from all that binds us. Such are the terms of unconditional surrender.
But surrender sounds so “humiliating” doesn’t it? My surrendering control over my own life and giving it over to Someone else? That runs counter to our human nature doesn’t it? Exactly! This is not something we do by ourselves, by our own self-control, but by the power of God, as an act of surrender to the Living God.
Paul was struck down by the only One who could lift him up. He was blinded by the only One who could truly open His eyes, forced to surrender by the only One who could really set Him free! And in that sense alone, Paul’s story can be our story as well. All we need do is surrender.
Before we leave this story let me go back to a point I made earlier about conversion. Stories like Paul’s always get all the attention, but the kind of changes Jesus makes in our lives is not a one and done kind of deal. We may point to our conversion as an isolated event when in reality it is but the first act in an on-going action. We see that in our lesson today as we are introduced to an unsung hero by the name of Ananias, one of my very favorite characters in all of Scripture.
We don’t know his back story. We don’t know how he came to faith. We don’t know anything about his conversion experience. All we know is that God used him in a mighty way in the oft-told story of Paul’s conversion.
Ananias had heard of Saul, only bad things, scary things. He knew that Saul was out to get people like him, followers of the Way. So he was shocked, terrified really, when God told him to go out to find Saul, to bring him back to his home and care for him, and for good reason. But Ananias did exactly as he was told, he surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, to the direction, guidance and command of the Living Lord. And through his words and acts and ministry, Saul’s eyes were opened and his heart changed.
It is one thing to speak of our conversion experiences, back then and there when such and such happened, that first time I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and quite another to be able to say, “This is how I continue to surrender to Him today, this day, this hour, in this incident.” Using the words of George MacDonald in this sense our conversion takes place “unnumbered times a day”, not just once, but over and over again. “Today, I will be Christ’s man. In this instance, I will be Christ’s woman!”
Friends, for each of us there is a starting point in the life of discipleship, a starting point in our deciding to walk in the way of Jesus, whether we remember it or not, a first act of conversion or surrender that got us started on the way, but that is all it is, a starting point, and today we are called, commanded really, to surrender, unconditionally, once again to the One we call Savior and Lord.
Prayer:
Lord, we are both challenged and encouraged by Your Word to us, intrigued and intimidated by Your invitation to follow You. Using the words of Francois Fenelon, “My God, I wish to give myself to Thee, give me the courage to do so.” Lord, hear our prayer.