ABSOLUTE SURRENDER By Andrew Murray Part 5 – Absolute Surrender - God Maintains Your Surrender

ABSOLUTE SURRENDER
By Andrew Murray

Part 5 – Absolute Surrender

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

God Maintains Your Surrender

That is the great difficulty with many. People say: "I have often been
stirred at a meeting, or at a convention, and I have consecrated myself
to God, but it has passed away. I know it may last for a week or for a
month, but away it fades, and after a time it is all gone."

But listen! It is because you do not believe what I am now going to
tell you and remind you of. When God has begun the work of absolute
surrender in you, and when God has accepted your surrender, then God
holds Himself bound to care for it and to keep it. Will you believe that?

In this matter of surrender there are two: God and I--I a worm, God the
everlasting and omnipotent Jehovah. Worm, will you be afraid to trust
yourself to this mighty God now? God is willing. Do you not believe
that He can keep you continually, day by day, and moment by moment?

Moment by moment I'm kept in His love;
Moment by moment I've life from above.

If God allows the sun to shine upon you moment by moment, without
intermission, will not God let His life shine upon you every moment?
And why have you not experienced it? Because you have not trusted God
for it, and you do not surrender yourself absolutely to God in that
trust.

A life of absolute surrender has its difficulties. I do not deny that.
Yes, it has something far more than difficulties: it is a life that
with men is absolutely impossible. But by the grace of God, by the
power of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, it is a
life to which we are destined, and a life that is possible for us,
praise God! Let us believe that God will maintain it.

Some of you have read the words of that aged saint who, on his
ninetieth birthday, told of all God's goodness to him--I mean George
Muller. What did he say he believed to be the secret of his happiness,
and of all the blessing which God had given him? He said he believed
there were two reasons. The one was that he had been enabled by grace
to maintain a good conscience before God day by day; the other was,
that he was a lover of God's Word. Ah, yes, a good conscience is
complete obedience to God day by day, and fellowship with God every day
in His Word, and prayer--that is a life of absolute surrender.

Such a life has two sides--on the one side, absolute surrender to work
what God wants you to do; on the other side, to let God work what He
wants to do.

First, to do what God wants you to do.

Give up yourselves absolutely to the will of God. You know something of
that will; not enough, far from all. But say absolutely to the Lord
God: "By Thy grace I desire to do Thy will in everything, every moment
of every day." Say: "Lord God, not a word upon my tongue but for Thy
glory, not a movement of my temper but for Thy glory, not an affection
of love or hate in my heart but for Thy glory, and according to Thy
blessed will."

Someone says: "Do you think that possible?"

I ask, What has God promised you, and what can God do to fill a vessel
absolutely surrendered to Him? Oh, God wants to bless you in a way
beyond what you expect. From the beginning, ear hath not heard, neither
hath the eye seen, what God hath prepared for them that wait for Him (1
Cor. 2:9). God has prepared unheard-of things, blessings much more
wonderful than you can imagine, more mighty than you can conceive. They
are divine blessings. Oh, say now:

"I give myself absolutely to God, to His will, to do only what God
wants."

It is God who will enable you to carry out the surrender.

And, on the other side, come and say: "I give myself absolutely to God,
to let Him work in me to will and to do of His good pleasure, as He has
promised to do."

Yes, the living God wants to work in His children in a way that we
cannot understand, but that God's Word has revealed, and He wants to
work in us every moment of the day. God is willing to maintain our
life. Only let our absolute surrender be one of simple, childlike, and
unbounded trust.