(Excerpt from Cheryl Gnagey's Spiritual Healing: The Surrender That Brings Victory, Chapter 9)
This morning I want to teach you a practical principle. Let me begin with a question. Is Jesus the LORD of your life? To know Jesus as your Lord is to know that you are not in control of anything--He is. And in order for Him to be in full control of you, you must live in a perpetual state of surrender. Moving from knowing Jesus as your Savior to knowing Him as both Savior and Lord requires a shift in your mindset. You must begin to consider, over and over, that you are no longer in charge of your life; He is in control of it...every moment and aspect of your today and everyday!
"Jesus will never be the Lord of the lost in this world because they have yet to receive Him as their Savior. We believers tend to accept and know Him readily as our Savior, yet we struggle to allow Him to be Lord. Quite often the only real difference between the lost and the saved is that we believe that Jesus died to save us. Most of us do not know Him as Lord any more than the world does. We only seem to know that He is supposed to be our Lord. In actuality, for Him to be Lord, we have to live life surrendered to Him. That will require us to crucify our desire to be in control of everything in our lives."
Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12: 1-2)
"By looking at the Greek definitions of a couple of phrases (one today and one in tomorrow's blog) from Romans 12:1-2, we see a critical step in the walk of every believer. The true rendering of the phrase 'present yourselves' is this: a presenting and a yielding of your whole self. Now let me ask you [another] important question. Were you fully surrendered at the time of your salvation? If you are like me, the answer is a resounding 'no!' Jesus did not become the Lord of everything in my life the moment I was saved. He was both capable of and available to be that, but on the day that I was saved, I only surrendered to Him as my Savior. I had no understanding of what it meant to know Jesus as my Lord, my Master, as the one in full control of me."
Is that your testimony as well? Then we must find motivation in our spiritual journey to discover the place where Jesus is Lord of us. That motivation can only be found and realized as we begin to truly know that Jesus is to be in full control of us, and respond to that by fully surrendering to Him.
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