Click photo to view post: Still Struggling to Surrender to God? Let’s Face the Facts: It’s Either God or Batman (Part Four ~ The Surrender Series)
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Still struggling to surrender to God?
It’s either God or Batman.
I think that’s going to need some explanation.
As humans, we have a strong desire to conform to whatever or whoever we admire and respect.
Hero worship pervades every facet of our society whether it’s in sports, music, theater, politics, or science. We dress, act, and look like those we admire, such as Batman.
Businesses make a fortune on this desire to be just like the latest, greatest superstar or hero.
When we hear Gatorade tells us to “Be Like Mike!” we know who they’re talking about even though Michael Jordan retired from basketball way back in 2003.
People worship. We were made for it.
Even as far back as Cicero in the first century B.C., philosophers observed that religion in one form or another is a universal trait.[1]
Part of worship is fully giving ourselves over to the object of our worship. We surrender to whatever we worship.
As humans we’re going to worship something or someone. How much better to worship someone worthy — and only God is worthy.
Looking back at the list about God from the beginning of this Surrender Series, I want us to take a closer look at each statement.
Facing the facts of these statements will help us move from wanting to want to surrender to God, to actually wanting to surrender.
I’ll work through this list slowly over the next several posts because this is important.
Let’s Face the Facts:
If we surrender to God, we’re surrendering to:
One who is WORTHY.
“Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise;
His greatness no one can fathom.”
~ Psalm 145:3
We need to understand and settle in our hearts that God is completely worthy of all our praise.
Creation echoes this truth and reflects His worthiness:
- If we stretched out every artery, vein, and capillary in our body and laid them end-to-end, we’d have to walk about 90,000 miles to get to the end.
- Our kidneys filter all 90,000 miles of our blood about every five minutes.
- At the same time, our kidneys pull about forty gallons of water from our blood every day, putting 99% of it back after it’s filtered.[2]
All of this is going on without a single thought or notice from us.
As Jesus entered Jerusalem before His crucifixion, a crowd of disciples began to praise Jesus as their king. Some Pharisees told Jesus to rebuke the disciples. He replied, “If they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:40)
The question is not IF God is worthy of our surrendering to Him; the question is IF we’ll do it.
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If we do NOT surrender to God,
we WILL surrender to:
one who is UNWORTHY.
We will surrender to someone or something.
If it’s not God, it’ll be something else because we were made to worship.
It may be a variety of things, such as a relationship, our work, or even the quest for acceptance.
It may even be ourselves. After all, we’re the only ones who could possibly know what will best fill our needs and desires.
Right?
Welcome to the grand illusion.
We humans can’t know what’s best for ourselves all the time.
To do that, we’d have to posses complete knowledge of every action we could take and the consequence of each of those actions at every moment.
As amazing as our brains are, they’re too limited for such knowledge.
God alone has intimate knowledge of everything there is to know.
He never learns anything new. He knows everything completely already.
Thus, God alone is the One to whom we should surrender.
He alone is worthy of worship.
In Acts 10:24-26, Cornelius fell at Peter’s feet and worshipped him. Peter immediately lifted him up, saying, “Stand up; I myself am also a man.”
In Revelation 19:10, John fell at the feet of an angel to worship him: “But he said to me, ‘See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God!’”
In Exodus 20:1-5a God commanded His people: “You must not have any other god but Me. . . You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods.”
God is a jealous God, and that’s good for us.
I remember the first time I heard Oprah Winfrey state that her spirit was bothered by God calling Himself a “jealous God.” She said, “God is jealous of me?”
My heart was sick over her gross misunderstanding of what God was saying.
(By the way, this is a stark example of why I continually proclaim that we must study the Bible so we know what the Bible is actually saying.)
God is NOT jealous of Oprah Winfrey or me or you.
He is, however, jealous for His name because no other name is worthy of worship.
Godly jealousy is far from human jealousy.
Out of God’s love for us, He wants only the best for us.
GOD IS THE BEST. Period.
It’s not egotistical for God to say that. It’s truth. It’s egotistical for anyone else to say that, but not for God.
If we worship anyone other than God,
we’re the ones who end up hurt.
Unworthy worship can’t help but end poorly because it’s unable to hold up to the pressure of the demands of worthiness.
If a race car driver’s pit crew puts on even one defective tire, eventually that tire is going to blow and the whole race could end in destruction for the driver — and take down other drivers with him.
A defective tire can’t withstand the force put on it during a race. It will blow, no matter how good it looks going on.
Likewise, no one but God can withstand the pressure of others surrendering fully to them, no matter how perfect they may appear to be.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
Tiger Woods, Bill Cosby, Lance Armstrong, Robin Williams, Oscar Pistorius and many other of our beloved heroes fell hard.
They, like us, weren’t worthy to be be worshipped.
Either We Open Our Eyes
or God Will Open Them For Us.
When we worship anyone or anything other than God, He’ll mercifully step in, or step aside, to wake us up to the reality of our destructive path.
If neither the sheer wonder of God’s creation nor the truth written on every page of the Bible opens our eyes to God’s worthiness, He’ll open our eyes another way.
But we won’t get to choose what way that will be. Think about that!
Since God knows best, He’ll choose the way He knows will work for us.
He’s not out to punish us, but to draw us away from a dangerous path of idol worship and surrender.
He wants to draw us onto the path of worship and surrender that will bless us, not harm us.
He wants to draw us to Himself because He alone is worthy of all worship and surrender.
I pray I’ll always choose to open my eyes to His sole worthiness before He’s forced to do it for me.
But even if God must open my eyes for me, I’d rather have my eyes opened to God in any way necessary than to leave this earth blind to Him.
Otherwise, it won’t be a pretty sight on the other side of eternity.
All people worship.
All people surrender.
Let’s surrender to the only One who’s worthy.
Let’s surrender to God.
Sharing is caring. I hope you’ll share this post with others. Thanks!
Join me for the next post in The Surrender Series. To see all the posts in this series, click here: The Surrender Series.
[1] Dummelow, J. R. 1944. Commentary on the Holy Bible. New York, NY: Macmillan.
[2] Exploring Creation with General Science, by Dr. Jay L. Wile, Apologia Educational Ministries, pg 347, p 379, p 381.
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