Sweet Surrender
“Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge. I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.” -Psalm 16:1
As the Christmas season comes to a close, and the excitement of a new year is knocking on our door, we often take time to reflect on God’s faithfulness to us. It has become a Shustella tradition to go out to eat as a family around New Year’s Eve and recount, month-by-month, the different things that we did as a family that year. These include the important, the funny, and the in-between. It is usually a time filled with awe at what God has done in our family to the less serious moments of hysterical laughter.
During these moments, we try to model to our kids the importance of pausing and reflecting. We want to teach them to think about their life, instead of just hurrying through the motions to get to the next thing.
Such reflection naturally leads to new goals for the upcoming year. Typically for me, these goals are eating healthier, exercising more, or becoming more organized. Goals like these are important and worthy of our effort, but can also become a source of discouragement if, by Day 3, I’ve already faltered.
Alongside making such goals, I think it is of utmost importance to make the overarching goal of our new year one of sweet surrender to the lordship of Jesus in our lives. One thing I noted in Kris’s recent sermon on this topic was that we do not “make Jesus to be Lord in our life.” He is already Lord. He is completely sovereign over anything that will happen to us in this New Year (Col 1:16-17). However, we can surrender daily to His lordship by saying “Not my will but thine be done (Luke 22:42).”
Sinclair Ferguson quoted this covenant prayer that is repeated yearly at a Methodist church in a small fishing village in Scotland. They repeat this prayer together and personally make commitments of surrender to the Lord for a new year:
“I am no longer my own, but Yours. Put me to what You will, place me with whom You will. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for You or laid aside for You, exalted for You or brought low for You. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to Your pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are mine, and I am Yours. May it be so. And may the covenant which I have just made here on earth be confirmed in heaven.”
It is a beautiful example of how to daily surrender our will, our wants, and our desires to what Christ wants, wills, and desires for us each day.
As we think about our goals for this new year, may we remember to surrender each one of them to the Lord. Unless we are intentional, our goals tend to be just that, “ours.” We think about in what ways we would like to “do better” or “feel better” for ourselves. However, Galatians 2:20 reminds us: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
What if, instead of our goals being about ourselves, they were focused on serving the Lord? What if our goals were to grow closer to Him, spend more time in His word, and develop a consistent time of prayer each day? What if we did make goals for exercising and eating healthier, but at the heart of those goals is a desire to have more energy to serve others? What if our goals for organizing our home and creating better systems were not just for ourselves but to make it easier to invite church members over to share a meal and build relationships? How can we serve Him daily in 2024?
As we enter into a New Year together, let us commit to surrender our will to the lordship of Jesus. May our daily prayer echo Psalm 16:1,
“Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you.”
-Andrea Shustella