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Complete Surrender
by Robert Gutierrez

Greetings headbangers, Robert here again with another cool message of encouragement. I was going to do an article about the Y2K dilemma, however that will have to wait until the next issue. I decided instead to give some insight into what it means to give ourselves totally to God. By that I mean surrender ourselves completely to him. Let's start by defining "surrender." Webster's defines surrender as: "1. To give up possession or power over; yield to another on compulsion. 2. To give up or abandon." Remember during the Gulf War in '91 when the Iraqis were shown surrendering to our troops with their hands in the air in complete surrender? Basically they were giving themselves up totally to our military forces so that they would survive. Now don't misunderstand me, God does not have a gun pointed at anyone's head, but he does want your complete surrender, willingly, without force. I have an answer to those who always ask us, "Well if God is such a loving God, then why do so many people suffer in this world and why doesn't he do something about it?" The answer is simple. Suffering is a result of sin! The cure for suffering is giving your life totally and willingly to Christ. That means total surrender! This is how the problems are solved. Sounds like an impossibility, right? Well, it is, but it's our own fault for not doing things God's way to begin with. Because of the first sin in the garden (Gen. 3:6-24) man has had to deal with the problem from the beginning. God wanted to have intimate and close fellowship with with us but because of our sin, we could not commune Him for he is holy and righteous. But now, through salvation in Jesus, we can have that fellowship once again. (John 3:16) Yes, total surrender to him can help ourselves and our world. You see, God does not want a bunch of robots to do his bidding. He will not force us to surrender to him. We are created in His image, which means we have a will. We must come to him willing and be willing to lay down our burdens to Him and allow Him to change our lives. (Matt. 11:28-10) "Come to me all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Back to Webster's definition. "To give up possession or power over, to give up or abandon." I believe that God wants us to give up our pride (our sin) which keeps us from totally surrendering to Him. Pride is what caused Lucifer (Satan) to fall. (Is. 14:13-15) It's that same pride that that we need to abandon, that sin that is keeping us from having a rich, full relationship with God. We need to lay down at his feet all the things that would hinder us form having that perfect peace and oneness with him, Sometimes even as Christians we have a tendency to pick up that excess baggage that we dropped of at God's feet days, months, and even years ago! Satan, who is the accuser, tries to bring back all that stuff we use to do, even after becoming a Christian. The scary part of that is sometimes we believe him and begin thinking that God didn't really forgive us for that sin or that we are unworthy to be forgiven because we are just too corrupt inside. What a bunch of baloney! My God says that, "He is faithful and just to forgive us all our sin!" (1John 1:8-9) So you see, we don't have to keep picking up our old sins any more. (Ps. 103:12) So why then do we keep bringing it up again with God? We just keep listening to Satan telling us about our past and we fall for it. Guilt is a very powerful tool that the devil uses against us. It can blind us so much that we can't see past our own sin. No, we are not perfect but we can be guilt free from the moment God forgives us, knowing that he will never leave us nor forsake us. (Joshua 1:5) It's for our best interest that we totally surrender to him in order to have that close relationship he longs to have with us. With that in mind, I would like to share with you my favorite scripture that I believe ties in with what I have been writing about. Isaiah 41:10, "Fear not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness." When we totally surrender to him we get the benefit of knowing that he is with us always. His Peace! -Robert