I’m sure the title to this post won’t make anyone want to read it! But in the Christian life, surrender (to God) is important. James 4:7 says we can’t even resist the devil without surrendering to God. Surrender is pre-requisite. Surrender starts at salvation. Then surrender is ongoing. Surrender is every day, every minute, every second. If you choose it.

When I was a very young Christian and started learning about the devil…well woohoo! I started learning about doing spiritual warfare and all that. Back then there was pretty much one school of thought on it in the church streams that I was involved in. However, as time has gone on in this “School of the Holy Spirit,” I have learned there are other facets to spiritual warfare.

There was a time when I felt the Holy Spirit whisper to me that people love to find out there’s a devil…then they have someone to blame their behavior on. I believe this to be true. Just look at human behavior. Just look at what happened in the garden with the first couple and the first disobedience to God. God came to Adam and Adam blamed Eve, then Eve blamed the serpent, and the serpent was left with no one to blame! The heart of a sinful human is such that they just do not want to take responsibility for stuff! We see this constantly in today’s world, and it’s getting worse. We lie to ourselves. In our sinful condition, we just cannot deal with the fact that we do things that ARE that evil. I find in the church, even Christians just don’t want to be that honest!

I’ll give you an example that seems to be prevalent in the lives of people I am around…husband is angry, husband says hateful, mean things to his wife and family. Family is understandably hurt. Next day, husband flirts with wife expecting, well, you know, intimacy. Wife is understandably, not interested. Husband acts as if nothing is wrong.

Here’s my interpretation of the above events: Husband knows he’s been a bad boy (a jerk), BUT husband won’t humble himself (surrender) to the correct way to fix this, which is saying to wife, “I am so sorry I acted like that. I was upset about something else and I should never have taken it out on you and the kids.” (or something like that) Instead of being HONEST, husband resorts to “flirting” to smooth things over. He takes another path (his own) instead of God’s way. Wife just wants honesty. (God does too) She no longer thinks the flirting is cute. And this behavior is repeated over and over and over as husband falls into deeper states of deluding himself. (This can be a wife too. I’m not picking on one sex.)

My point is, we lie to “cover” ourselves, to protect ourselves, much like Adam and Eve did in the garden when they cut fig leaves to cover their nakedness, which they had just become aware of as they sinned against God. We lie because we are AFRAID. Remember as a kid, you lied because you were afraid of the consequences! We are still kids inside!

So, in order to “be conformed to the image of Christ” which is the goal of God for our lives, we must first learn to be honest, and that takes courage. Our God is love. He receives us no matter what. He will not reject us. We don’t have to be afraid of Him at all.  Come walk in the light. Be honest with yourself and others. You don’t have to be afraid of God. He already knows! 1 John 1:7 says, “If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” And we get to have a clear conscience too if we walk in the light! The Holy Spirit is here to help us.

Holy Spirit, come and fill us daily with your light. We trust You and the Word of God only for the Truth. Thank you for the work You do in cleansing our  hearts from all sin so that we can follow after God, to serve and represent Him in this dark world.