Our Christian faith places on us the responsibility to surrender ourselves to God: our worries, doubts, hopes, dreams, triumphs, and trials. God desires all of us and deserves all of us. After all, he created us and only in doing his will can we find true joy and peace. Most of us understand this concept, at least intellectually.
We also understand that this surrendering is a choice. We can choose to give ourselves to God because we possess ourselves in the first place, albeit as a free gift from him. For this same reason, it’s often harder to understand how to surrender to Jesus the other people in our lives. How others treat us, the choices they make, and ultimately who they choose to become—these things worry us, especially in the relationships we value most. They also feel largely outside of our control.
Yet, total surrender is exactly what it sounds like: God granted each of us a life of limitless gifts, none of which we earned or have a right to, including the other people we are privileged to know and love. Oftentimes, it is this surrender of others that we miss in our spiritual lives.
But what does it look like to surrender others to God?
First of all, by virtue of being human, we all exist in one big human family. This ultimately means that—just as in our immediate families—we are responsible to a greater or lesser degree for all the people around us. How we operate in the world doesn’t just impact us. It impacts countless others as a pebble thrown in a pond causes a rippling out effect to cover the entire pond. We won’t know until we die and face Jesus how much we impacted others, for better or worse.
Thus, surrender cannot mean an abdication of responsibility for other people. Where God is calling us to intervene in the lives of others, we are obligated to answer that call. Surrender, instead, has far more to do with outcomes and credit.
To make things simple, we can break down this idea of surrendering others into two categories. We must surrender to God:
Other people’s choices and ultimate fate
How other people affect us
1. Other People’s Choices
Everyone has had the experience of desiring to and even trying to help another person who refuses to be helped. Even in therapy it’s unfortunately common to meet clients who promise they want to change but resist every prompting to do so.
The reason this experience is so painful is twofold: first, we want what’s best for the other person. We don’t want to see them suffer unnecessarily if changing their attitude or behavior would make them better off. And, second, we believe we know how they could change in a positive way. It hurts to have our advice ignored.
Yet, if we take a lesson from God’s playbook (the Bible), we see that he is very clear on our limited ability to influence others. Even Jesus himself couldn’t sway the hearts of all who heard his message without compromising their free will. This limitation of influence is ultimately what lead him to the cross, the only way to atone for the sins of a world that had turned its back on him.
Only the Holy Spirit can lead our hearts to change. Thus, it is ultimately up to God’s grace and the individual’s cooperation with that grace to see a real conversion of heart. I understand this even as a therapist. I can never take any credit for my clients’ growth. The Spirit provides them the opportunity for healing. The client must then cooperate with the Spirit’s promptings. I am only there to point out the opportunity.
2. How Other People Affect Us
When our spouse upsets us or our children don’t listen or our friends aren’t there for us when we need them, our knee-jerk reaction is to grasp for control. We respond defensively, or offensively, to protect ourselves from feeling the hurt and from being hurt again in the future.
But, Jesus invites us down a different path:
“As a surgeon who has to operate on a person of importance takes extra care to cause him as little suffering as possible and only what is strictly necessary for his recovery, or as a father unwillingly punishes a son he loves dearly only because he is obliged to do so for his son’s good, so God treats us as noble beings for whom He has the highest regard, or as beloved children whom he chastises because he loves them. (Rev 3:19)” - Fr. Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure and Saint Claude de la Colombière, Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence
God asks us to trust that each moment of our lives has been carefully orchestrated and allowed as part of his greater plan for our sanctification. This includes even the way those around us live. Every discomfort or disappointment, when embraced as an opportunity to abandon ourselves and others to God all the more, will leave our peace undisturbed and our faith stronger.
So, while at first it’s painfully humbling to admit how little control we have over others, a true acceptance of our limits is also freeing. When we view ourselves as we truly are, and others as they are, we can begin to operate within our real sphere of control and trust God to work out the rest, thus striking the holy balance between personal responsibility and trustful surrender.
Render onto God what is God’s, as Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:21. Certainly, the people we love most, their fates, their decisions, their sanctification all belong to the Lord just as much as we belong to him.
Keep doing the Lord’s work!
~ Cameron