God Accepts Your Surrender – Andrew Murray

God works it in the secret of our heart, God urges us by the hidden power of His Holy Spirit to come and speak it out, and we have to bring and to yield to Him that absolute surrender. But remember, when you come and bring God that absolute surrender, it may, as far as your feelings or your consciousness go, be a thing of great imperfection, and you may doubt and hesitate and say:

Is it absolute?

But, oh, remember there was once a man to whom Christ had said:

If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

And his heart was afraid, and he cried out:

Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief.

That was a faith that triumphed over the Devil, and the evil spirit was cast out. And if you come and say: Lord, I yield myself in absolute surrender to my God, even though it be with a trembling heart and with the consciousness: I do not feel the power, I do not feel the determination, I do not feel the assurance, it will succeed. Be not afraid, but come just as you are, and even in the midst of your trembling the power of the Holy Ghost will work.

Have you never yet learned the lesson that the Holy Ghost works with mighty power, while on the human side everything appears feeble? Look at the Lord Jesus Christ in Gethsemane. We read that He, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself a sacrifice unto God. The Almighty Spirit of God was enabling Him to do it. And yet what agony and fear and exceeding sorrow came over Him, and how He prayed! Externally, you can see no sign of the mighty power of the Spirit, but the Spirit of God was there. And even so, while you are feeble and fighting and trembling, in faith in the hidden work of God’s Spirit do not fear, but yield yourself.

And when you do yield yourself in absolute surrender, let it be in the faith that God does now accept of it. That is the great point, and that is what we so often miss  that believers should be thus occupied with God in this matter of surrender. I pray you, be occupied with God. We want to get help, every one of us, so that in our daily life God shall be clearer to us, God shall have the right place, and be all in all. And if we are to have that through life, let us begin now and look away from ourselves, and look up to God. Let each believe  while I, a poor worm on earth and a trembling child of God, full of failure and sin and fear, bow here, and no one knows what passes through my heart, and while I in simplicity say, O God, I accept Thy terms; I have pleaded for blessing on myself and others, I have accepted Thy terms of absolute surrender  while your heart says that in deep silence, remember there is a God present that takes note of it, and writes it down in His book, and there is a God present who at that very moment takes possession of you. You may not feel it, you may not realize it, but God takes possession if you will trust Him..

God not only claims it, and works it, and accepts it when I bring it, but God maintains it.

Andrew Murray