Total Surrender to God

Wow, those hands go up. A lot of prayer needs. Thank you. Would you just, for a moment, gather with those around you, because there's somebody close by you that needs prayer. Take just a moment, just a minute, to pray for those next to you. Just join hands with somebody, pray for them, pray with them. If they want to tell you what to pray for, please do that, but just take a few minutes, and then I'll close this in prayer, verbally, in just a minute. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Holy Father, all over this place, prayers are being lifted up to you. What a sweet sound, Father. In this room, it is a sweet sound, Father, so I can't imagine how sweet the sound is to you, Almighty God. As people lift their hearts, their voices, their concerns, and Father, you make it very clear in Scripture that we have the freedom and the privilege to ask. And so this morning, Father, we lift our hearts, we ask, Lord, meet the needs of everyone in this place today, Father. May they sense the power and the presence of God like never before. And may your Spirit just rain down on us today, Father, that we might sense your power in such a way that we are motivated to move from this place to telling a lost world about Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray. In the name of Jesus, amen. Wow, isn't that a good sweet time? Man, thank you for allowing me to do that. I know I do things a little weird, a little different sometimes. Please forgive me. If I get too weird, you can just take me fishing. Some of you are volunteering to do that now. This week's lesson is on total surrender. It's our 15th week in the book Believe. As we talk about things that we believe in, and now we're moving to the things that we act upon. And this is a deep reaction today. And I tell you, this sermon is an exciting sermon to preach, but it's also a convicting sermon. It's easy to talk about surrender, but it's much harder to live a surrendered life totally to God. I hope that at the end of this service today that you will leave this place with a resolve to be totally 100% surrendered to God. When I think of total surrender, I think of people like our good friends, Alan and Beth Locke, who are missionaries who were in Johannesburg, but who is now in Ghana, who have given their lives. And they could have come home early this year and retired, but God has convicted them that they needed to stay on the mission field, and that wherever He takes them. And I know that Ghana is not near as nice as Johannesburg was, and that they are sacrificing and giving their lives for the Lord clear across the other side of the world. Some of you have gone on mission trip, and you've been there. You've been with those two, and you know the work and the dedication they have. But also think of a young lady that I saw a story on from Rick Warren and some of the things that he had shared. This young lady is in the country next door to Ghana, the Togo, Africa. And she had lost her husband. She had lost her children. And yet a pastor preached the gospel to her, and she accepted and received Jesus Christ as her real and personal Savior. She would come Sunday after Sunday, and they had an offering time. And it's not like our offering time. In fact, I thought about maybe we should do it this way. They would all come forward and give their offering at a table. It wasn't money. It was fruit. It was vegetables. Sometimes it was a live chicken because that's what they had to give. And they gave their tenth. They gave their tithe. And they would bring it to a table. And this lady would sit every Sunday desiring to give something, but she literally had nothing. Nothing to give. But oh, she wanted to give. One Sunday, she walked down, and she laid down a coin on that table. There was chickens. There was vegetables. There were fruits. She laid a coin. It was worth about $1. The pastor was concerned when he saw that. He said, I wonder how she got that. She doesn't have anything. The only way she could have got it is to steal it. So he didn't embarrass her, but after church, he went and asked her. He said, Sarah, how did you get that dollar? And she said, oh, pastor, you know that I've lost everything in my life. I have lost my children. I have lost my husband. But I've given my life to Jesus Christ, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that when I die, I am going to go to heaven, and I am so grateful. I am so thankful that I wanted to give something. So I sold myself to that slave owner for the rest of my life for $1, and I want to give everything I have today. Total surrender. Rick Freeway, four of us guys, got to go to a conference this weekend called Man Up. Probably not appropriate for me, but it was called Man Up. It was a great conference. It was a good time. Heard a lot of good testimonies. One of them that really impressed me was this guy named Rick Freeway. His ministries are called Freeway Ministries. Isn't that a neat name? He had a rough life. I don't know if any of you got to go see him. I know. It was a breakout session. He had got hooked on drugs down in Springfield, Missouri. One day, he had a load of drugs in his car. Police were chasing him. He went as fast as he could, almost 200 miles an hour into Monte Carlo. Finally blew the transmission out. They picked him up. They caught him with some... I forget the exact drug that he had. I think it was crack. I'm not sure. They caught him with some drugs. He ended up in Leavenworth in Kansas. In fact, he said yesterday, he said, I promised I would never come back to Kansas, but here I am. Because those 30 months were not easy ones. But in those 30 months, he found Jesus Christ as his real and personal Savior. He surrendered to Jesus Christ while he was in prison for those 30 months. When he got out, he began to serve God. He began to reach out and to find people who had going through the same thing with addiction to drugs and running away from the law and as a criminal. And now he's been asked to move to Omaha, to the Omaha Baptist Center and to start a ministry there. And through the recovery process, he had obtained a really great job, 70,000 plus a year. He owns two houses. He had a nice car. He had two boats. Life is comfortable for Rick. And God calls him away from Springfield, Missouri to Omaha, Nebraska to run the Omaha Baptist Center to reach people just like what he had done. And for him, it was difficult. But he said he came to a time of total surrender that trusting God to get rid of all those things, all that material wealth, all those things that he had to move and to surrender what God was calling him to do. I could probably stop right now because some of you are convicted and saying, am I totally surrendered to God? But I'm going to preach a little longer, okay? So before I do and get into the text this morning, we're going to be in Luke 5. Let us pray. Father, thank You. Thank You that You surrendered all on the cross of Calvary. And Father, that we should do likewise to give our all to follow You. Help us to do so in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to summarize verses 1-7 of Luke 5. Jesus was preaching in its near close around the time of the Sermon on the Mount. And I think it's exactly that period of time when He was preaching for many days and the crowds were swell. We know at the Sermon on the Mount there were over 5,000, probably closer to 10,000 people that were surrounded Jesus. And the crowds were so great that they were pressing upon Him that He couldn't be effective in communicating to everybody so Simon Peter and another boat owner had their boats pulled in there by the lake and Jesus said, put out just a little bit. He got in the boat and He completed His teaching time out there on the lake which was a good time because in a very still day if you've ever been on a lake you can hear voices just kind of go over that lake and that's what He did. So He preached for a while and then after He got through preaching He said, let's go fishing. My kind of story. And Peter had already cleaned the nets. Basically they were through for the day and that's a lot of work. Cleaning the nets, putting them up. I mean that was, they were done. And they go out fishing and Jesus says, Peter put out the nets. He said, man we've been fishing all day and we haven't caught anything but whatever you say Lord at your command we will do that. And that's what they did. They put down the nets. They had not caught anything the previous time that they'd been fishing and all of a sudden they could not bring in all the fish that they needed to bring in. They said, they called that other boat and said come out here come get all of this fish. And the boats were so full they began to actually sink. And that's an amazing catch, is it not? Any of us would like to have that kind of catch right Rick? But that's not where the story ends. Follow along with me in verse 8. You can read it in your Bibles. You can read it on the screen or you can read it in your notes. But when Simon Peter saw it he fell down at Jesus' knees saying, depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all were with him who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid from now on, you will be catching men. Or as we often say, you'll be fishers of men. Verse 11, And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. Wow. Three very quick points this morning. The sermon is not long, but the words of God are powerful this morning. I want you to hear the words from God. There's one point I want you to grab hold of. If you'll go ahead and go to the next screen, please. Total surrender is total sacrifice to be single minded toward God and only God. We studied last week what it meant to be focused on God, to be single minded. And so if we are single minded, totally focused on God, moving to being totally surrendered should be the next progression of steps that we take in our life. So I want you to read that one point with me. Everybody read that first sentence up there at the top. Total surrender is total sacrifice to be single minded toward God and only God. Now that's the problem. We can surrender, but sometimes it's not to God. Sometimes it's to other things that are pressing upon us in our life. So here are the three things that I want us to look at right quickly. As we are totally surrendered, it will create opportunities to see God's astonishing power. Look at verse nine again. It's the same word there. When all who were with him were astonished at the catch. If you are a believer and you have lived any period of time with Christ, you have seen astonishing things in your life. What are some of those most astonishing things that you've seen? I can't remember. Did you go with me to see the pulpit rock? Did we make that trip together? Was that the one I went the first time to Norway? I don't think you went on that one. Yeah. My mother and maybe my father, I can't remember, my sister and her friend, we took a ride through one of those Norway fjords. And I haven't been to Alaska yet, but I'm wanting to go sometime. And I hear the fjords in Alaska are just like the ones in Norway. The water is as deep as tall as the mountain. And one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen is this place called Pulpit Rock. It looks like a giant pulpit just sticking out over the water, the fjord there, close to Stavanger, Norway. What really is scary to me is that people can take a long hike and end up on top of that pulpit rock. And from looking down in the boat, I could look up and there were people sitting on the edge, dangling their feet off the edge of the pulpit. That wouldn't be like me sitting up here. But I tell you, I think about that. I'm afraid of heights. This is too high for me right here. And I think about that literally. I thought about this last night as I was thinking of this astonishing story of the pulpit rock. And I get this little tingle in my back. I can't watch TV. That movie Cliffhanger scares me to death because you're always hanging off the edge. But the beauty of God's creation is totally astonishing. There are a lot of things like that that we've seen in our life that are astonishing, that God has created out of His creation. Let me tell you where it really gets astonishing. When a young lady and a young husband comes into my office and says that the doctor has told them that they cannot have children, and they're brokenhearted. They're just weeping and crying in my office and say, why is God doing this in our life at this point in time? And I said, I don't know, but let's pray. And I got up and I went over and laid my hands on both of them. They are now, they're probably almost grown up now, but parents of two lovely, beautiful boys. The doctors didn't have it right. God had another plan. And they gave all the credit to God. God did a miracle in their life and provided not just one, but two children. Or a young lady who comes in my life and the doctors tell her, you need to terminate the baby because the baby is not well and it's not going to make it in life. And I go and pray over this young lady and that young lady had a perfect baby girl that is still alive and a young lady now this day. That to me is answer prayer. That to me is astonishing and God still does it over and over and over again. When God is involved in our lives and the most astonishing thing that he has done for us is to give his son as an atonement on the cross of Calvary, he has demonstrated his love for us. The book that we're reading, there was a great quote in there. It says that belief begins with a declaration. In other words, I declare that Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life, that he died on the cross of Calvary, that I might have life eternal and that he would forgive me and cleanse me from all of my sins. That is when belief in Christ begins. I declare and I accept and I will receive the resurrected living Christ in my life. That's a declaration. But after that declaration, the most obvious point is it leads to a demonstration, a gratitude of thanks for that salvation so rich and free. God is merciful. God is full of grace and our life is a P.S. saying thanks for all he has done. And our objective is to dedicate our life for his purpose, not ours. Now the question is, do we really honestly do that? Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of my favorite 20th century theologians wrote, when Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die. Jesus would say it like this in Luke 9, 23, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. Total surrender. Say that with me, total surrender. I believe that when we total surrender to Christ, we will see God moving in astonishing ways. Rick Freeway, this fellow I was telling you about earlier, he's moving to Omaha and has not been able to sell all of his possessions and because he quit his job, the bank is not loaning him any money. So he didn't know where he was going to live in Omaha. Finally, a fellow back in Springfield said, I'll tell you what, God is telling me that if you'll go, I'll buy your house for you. Totally unprepared for that. I'll buy your house for you and I don't want you to buy a cheap house. He said, I want you to buy a good house in case if you ever move again, I want to have a good investment kind of thing. He was totally overwhelmed. He was totally astonished. When we act in obedience and we totally surrender to what God is doing, he will provide our needs. That leads us to the next point this morning. When we are totally surrendered and total sacrifice to be single-minded toward God and only God, it will require a total abandonment. This is the most obvious point of this sermon in verse 11. When they had brought their boats to the land, they left everything and followed him. I don't know what happened to all the fish, but they left them. That was a good profit day. They left them. Did you catch that? They didn't want the fish anymore. I'm sure they put them to good use. I'm sure they fed them and they fed a lot of families, but they left them. They left everything, including fish, including the nets, including the boats. They left everything and what did they do? They followed Jesus. We talked about it just in a moment in our Sunday school class, in our classroom, about Peter's failure, but Peter's failure was not fatal. This is going to speak to most of us here this morning. We all know that Jesus told him, said, Peter, before the end of the night, you're going to deny me three times. Oh no, Lord, I would never do that. I will die with you. I will put up my sword and cut off a guy's ear and I'll do whatever it takes to live for you. No, Peter, you're going to deny me three times. Sure enough, we know the story. Hey, aren't you one of his followers? No, not me. Hey, weren't you with him? No, not me. Hey, you got to be one of those guys. Aren't you Peter? No, you must be thinking of someone else. I was fixing to do a rooster call, but I can't do that anymore. And the rooster sounded and Peter understood that he had failed, but it was not fatal. It was not fatal. Let me tell you, we can have an attitude of total surrender and we should, but because we still live in a fallen world, we mess up. Let's get real. As Randy Frazee said, we need to be a living sacrifice, but sometimes we still crawl down off the altar. That's the problem with the living sacrifice. We still fail, but that's not the end of the story for Peter and it should not be the end of story for us if we fail. In John 21, Jesus, again, this is amazing. I just caught this analogy this morning. In John 21, we see Peter and the disciples going fishing again. Didn't they leave everything behind? You see how easy it is to slip back in to our old lifestyle? Peter and the apostles didn't know what else to do, so they went fishing. And Jesus was on the bank. Have you caught anything? No, we've been fishing all night, hadn't caught a thing. Cast your nets on the other side. Who's that guy telling us what to have to fish? Well, we might as well. We haven't caught anything on this side. And all of a sudden, they brought up more fish than they could possibly hold. Simon Peter got it all of a sudden. Hey, I've seen this once before. That is Jesus. You catch that? I don't know that I've ever caught that before. All of a sudden, there was a flashback. I've seen this miracle before. Only Jesus can do that. That's the only astonishing thing that I've seen. That's one of the astonishing things I've seen in my life. That is Jesus. And Jesus took off his cloak and he began to swim. He didn't wait. He went to see Jesus. Jesus said, Peter, do you love me? Oh, yeah, Lord, I do love you. Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, feed my lambs. And Peter taught Jesus as a leading scholar. His friends now knew him as Peter велl. Peter was led and justified and justified by Christ, reinstated to the ministry. And Peter became one of the most proficient, profound leaders in the New Testament Church. On an upside-down cross. Paul would say in Romans 12, 1, 2, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern that what is the will of God and is good and acceptable and perfect. Sacrifice wholly acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Total surrender requires total abandonment, total sacrifice of your life for God. Most of you have heard the story of the great Bodini, right? You know this story. He's the guy that 1900s would cross, I think it was early 1900s, would cross the Niagara Falls and he would walk a tightrope across it. I don't think they let him do that anymore. And then he would take a wheelbarrow across and he would say, how many of you can believe that I can walk across this tightrope with a wheelbarrow? Everybody would say, yeah, you can do that. And then he would come back and say, oh, how many of you would like to get in this wheelbarrow and see if I can walk across? And everyone, oh, total surrender. I was with our grandchildren this week. Our grandson had some minor surgery and I was keeping the one-year-old and I had forgotten mercy how hard it is to keep up with a one-year-old, but it was a lot of fun. And there was a period of time where I was throwing Daniel up in the air and catching him and then bending him down and he was having fun and I was throwing him up and I was catching him and then I would bend him down and he was just laughing and having a great time. And so you've all done that. You've all done that with children, but if you didn't know me and you didn't know that I was 63 years old and I'm glad I didn't tell my son that I was doing that, would you let me throw your own child up and catch them and throw them down and come back up? Would you trust me to do that? What if the child, what if Daniel would not let go of me? What if he would have tried to hold on to me? It would have been a fiasco, right? Total surrender has to come to a time where we trust God with everything in our life and we say, okay, I surrender to you, total abandonment, I'm leaving everything, I'm giving it all to you and I am not gonna hold on to anything else. I am yours, take me, use me whatever way you want to. Everybody say total surrender with me one more time. Total surrender. It is a total sacrifice to be single-minded toward God and only God. And the third point is by accepting God's atonement by repenting. Let's go back up to verse eight. I think there's something very significant going on in Peter's life. But when Peter saw it, he fell down. He was humbled. Depart from me, for I'm a sinful man, oh Lord. That is an act of repentance. In other words, he was saying, I'm a sinner. I don't deserve to be in this place. And that's not what Jesus did. He said, that's the kind of heart I want, Peter. I want a repentant heart. Let me suggest to you that the other two things cannot happen unless we have a heart of repentance accepting God's atonement. We cannot be astonished by God. We cannot be, the second point is we can't go move to abandonment, total abandonment unless we have come to a place where we totally repent and say that I know that I am headed this way in my life. I'm a fisherman, but God, you have done something astonishing in my life. I'm ready to leave everything. And so I repent and I'm turning to you, Almighty God. That is the first step of total surrender. We have sung the song this morning, I surrender all. And truthfully, we ought to be saying, I surrender some. Now we become almost hypocritical when we sing that song because we're still holding on to something. We're not truly repentant. We have not truly confessed our sin and turned to an Almighty God who loves us and cares deeply about us and wants us to be on purpose for his purposes, not our purposes, to see that a lost world would come to know Jesus Christ as a real and personal savior. I want you to notice the process of discipleship that occurs in this teaching that Jesus does with his disciples. He preaches the gospel there in the boat. He demonstrates his power. And then they repented and they followed Jesus Christ. Paul would say it like this in Romans 5a, God demonstrated his love for us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. It is a process of discipleship, folks. We here as a New Testament church stand firmly and boldly to say we will preach the gospel, not only here on Sunday mornings, but as we live our life in the world that we are placed, that we will be a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. People will see Jesus in us as we live our life on a daily basis. And as a result, people will repent. As a result, people will come to Jesus Christ. W.H. Griffith Thomas was the co-founder of Dallas Theological Seminary. He wrote these words, "'There should be no hiatus, no gap, "'no interval between the acceptance of Christ as Savior "'and the surrender to Him as Lord. "'His full title is Jesus Christ our Lord. "'And the full extent of its meaning, "'though of course not its full depth, "'is intended to be realized from our very first experience "'of His saving presence and power. "'The initial act of surrender, however, "'is but the beginning of a life of surrender. "'The act must develop into an attitude.' "'This has been recognized by God's true children "'in all the ages as their abounded duty and service.'" I was 11 years old when I gave my life to Christ. I was 12 years old when I totally surrendered to the ministry. I still remember the song that was sung during the invitation that day. I surrender all. I would like to tell you and stand here and say that I've been perfect in that surrender. I've had some failures, we all have. I've had some Peter moments when I haven't stood boldly for Christ. But God always remind me that I belong to Him. And I stand here before you today saying, I want, I want more than anything to be totally available and surrendered to my God who loves me and cares deeply for me. So are you totally surrendered with a total sacrifice to be single-minded to God and only God today? The invitation will be just a little bit different today. I will be standing here, others will be available. But we're gonna play a song. You can sing with it if you want, you don't have to. I'm gonna have you to stand and I'm gonna ask you to stand with me and I'm gonna ask you to stand with me, I'm gonna have you to stand. If you don't understand invitation, this is a time for you to respond. You can either come to this altar and pray today and say, I'm surrendering all to you. You can come and pray with me if you want or someone else that will be here and say, I need help, please pray for me. Or if you've never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, it begins right there with repentance, accepting Christ as the resurrected living Christ. We would love to pray with you and share with you how you can know Jesus Christ. But the invitation is a time to respond. If God is speaking to you today about total surrender, why would you not do that? Why would you not leave everything and follow Christ? He is God. I implore you, I don't care what age you are, whether you're young, middle adult, senior adult, total surrender is what God wants out of each and every one of us in this place. Would you do that? Father, I surrender to you today the very best way I know how. I wanna give everything I have to you. I wanna be available to you, whatever that might mean, wherever that might be. You are God. Father, my confession is that I like to be comfortable. I like to live in a comfortable place. I like being where I'm at. But Father, if it requires something else in my life, I wanna be available. I want to do that. Help me to submit and surrender to that. May that be the cry of all of us here this morning, Father. We give you praise, we give you honor. In Jesus' name, would you stand? We're gonna sing this song, it's on the video. Sing it with me or just listen. But above all, be obedient to what God says. ♪ Holy Father, love me still ♪ I have fallen from your will ♪ I am broken ♪ Hear my humble cry ♪ My cry ♪ Take my life and make it yours, Lord ♪ Fill me with your love ♪ You are all I need ♪ I surrender all of me ♪ I have wandered for so long ♪ Tired and weary on my own ♪ In your arms I know I'm home ♪ Oh God, my God ♪ Take my life and make it yours, Lord ♪ Fill me with your love ♪ You are all I need ♪ I surrender all of me ♪ Take my life and make it yours, Lord ♪ Fill me with your love ♪ You are all I need All I need I surrender I surrender I surrender All of me Amen. Would you say it with me one more time? Total surrender. Total surrender. May that be our prayer. May God bless you as you leave this day. Dan, are we going to sing one more song as we leave? No? Let's all sing, I surrender all. We all know at least one verse of that. I got it right here. All to Jesus, I surrender all to Him. I freely give. Let's sing that and that will be our closing hymn of the day. All to Jesus, I surrender all to Him. I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him. In His presence daily live. I surrender all. I surrender all. All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. May it be so. God bless you. Have a great day.