Something that’s always puzzled me about life with Jesus is that real, genuine lasting change doesn’t happen for many followers of Christ. Why? The Bible is replete with the idea of spiritual change for the better. You might even say that becoming more like Jesus is the main focus of the New Testament. So, why do we experience so little change for the better?

In my readings in the Book of Hebrews, the writer lays out a slippery slope downward that keeps us from experiencing real, lasting change. It begins in Hebrews 2:1-4. In Hebrews 1, we’re introduced to the concept of the vastness and greatness of Jesus Christ. Then, in the beginning of chapter 2, the writer challenges us to not neglect this great salvation that we have in Christ. Neglect is the starting point of the downward spiritual slippery slope. To reverse neglect means that we need to spend time with God cultivating our spiritual life with Him through prayer, reflection on His Word, silence, solitude and other spiritual practices that keep God and life with Jesus in the forefront of our everyday lives.

As I read and reflect on the gospels, it’s amazing to see how Jesus surprised people with who God was. For instance, in Luke 15, the stories of the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost son show us that this all -powerful, omnipotent God loves us beyond what we can think or imagine. The idea of “lost” that Jesus was trying to convey through these stories is that lost means that we are out of place until we enter into a relationship with God. Our original place of belonging was to be in relationship with God forever. When that was lost in Genesis 3, God has been trying to restore us to Himself. Today, that restoration with God happens when we invite Christ to be our Lord and Savior and choose to follow Him.

Being committed is the oppostie of the spiritual principle of being surrendered.

Commitment challenges you to a higher level of determination.
Surrendering is yielding your life to God’s purposes for you.
Commitment is saying that - I’ll do it better.
Surrendering is asking God to work through you.
Commitment is about me and my best effort.
Surrendering is waiting on God, listening to Him and asking Him to help me do it.
Commitment is me running the ship and staying at the controls.
Surrendering is letting the God who made me - have the controls of my life.
Commitment brings frustration and even burnout after a while because it’s all about me.
Surrendering helps you break through the barriers and experience continual inner peace, contentment, joy – regardless … of what’s going on around me.

Commitment brings burnout and disillusionment with what the Christian life is all about. It’s the spiritual principle of surrendering that produces the kind of spiritual life that the Bible talks about. We have to recognize that surrendering is a total response to God where God Himself and His daily provisions for us are appropriated in our own lives. Living life with God means that He wants us to respond to His promptings, leadings and spiritual nudges and ask Him for the wisdom, strength and power as we obey what He wants us to do.

How many of us are really satisfied with our spiritual lives? Why do we struggle so much with relating with God? The Bible tells us that God is love and that God is also personally interested in connect with us. So, why do we feel like God is a million miles away at times? We even try and try and try to connect with Him, serve Him and do whatever we can. But, yet we still feel empty.

I think we’re missing a basic spiritual principle: God doesn’t want us to commit. He doesn’t want commitment. He doesn’t want us to try to do it on own self-effort. Rather, for us to experience life with God in a way that brings inner peace, joy and contentment we need to rethink things. God doesn’t want us to commit to Him, He wants us to surrender instead.

Surrendering is submitting our whole being and lives to God so that He can begin to work out His purposes in our lives and through us.