DIVINE SURRENDER

After Jesus and his apostles concluded their last passover meal together and made their way across the brook Kidron to enter Gethsemane, He expressed to them feelings of sorrow and of a heavy weight.  He indicated His soul was exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.  We don’t know what He knew in advance about what awaited Him in the Garden and on the cross but it’s evident that the experience surprised Him because He “began to be sore amazed”.  Leaving Peter, James, and John to watch with Him from a short distance, He went further ahead and fell to the ground and prayed unto His Father.  “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”  The fact Jesus pled for relief from the atoning role He’d previously offered to assume is indicative of the unfathomable enormity of the task.  So great was the weight that bore down upon Him that He sought relief from the only one who could grant it, His Father.  The Savior’s will was being expressed as it confronted the reality of the Father’s will.  What was at stake in that garden of the olive press?  What depended upon whether or not Jesus would yield to the pressure of His own need or yield to the desires of His Heavenly Father?  This great and last sacrifice, being infinite and eternal in reach and scope, demanded one of perfect purity to assail the combined powers of evil and to not only triumph over universal temptation but to also take upon Himself the suffering caused by the consequences of all sin, both of the guilty and the innocent.  It would also lead to triumph over death, providing the gift of universal resurrection to all mankind.  This sacred, selfless act balanced the scales of divine justice, offering redemption to all of God’s children on condition of repentance.  The all encompassing nature of Christ’s atoning sacrifice is so incomprehensible to mortals that they can only conceptually conceive of its process and impact.  When contemplating, as best one can, the implications of Christ allowing His own will to be swallowed up in the will of His Father, regardless of the price it would require Him to pay, could one expect to claim the full blessings of that sacred gift without surrendering one’s own will to the will of Heavenly Father?  From a mortal perspective, surrender is a last resort, forced upon us by situations beyond our ability to fashion a favorable outcome.  It is indicative of failure.  But there is another type of surrender which can only be understood from an eternal perspective.  Divine surrender is Jesus surrendering His own will to the will of His Father.  Divine surrender is never coerced.  It must be given willingly in order to be efficacious.  Unlike forced surrender with its unpalatable conditions and consequences, divine surrender is ultimately liberating, enlightening, and filled with majestic opportunities otherwise unavailable.  Jesus chose to surrender His will, allowing it to be swallowed up in the will of His Father.  “. . . Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)  Each of us will experience the confrontation of our own will in opposition to the will of God.  King Benjamin addressed this confrontation and its inevitable outcomes.  “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.” (Mosiah 3:19)  Obviously, the transformation from the natural man to saint doesn’t happen quickly or all at once.  It’s a progressive process.  It is both initiated and sustained by continually choosing to yield, or surrender, one’s own will to God’s will.  God’s desire, or will, is for each of His children to choose to return to Him through the sacrificial, atoning sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ.  President Ezra Taft Benson addresses this personal confrontation of wills this way, “The central feature of pride is enmity—enmity toward God and enmity toward our fellowmen.  Enmity means ‘hatred toward, hostility to, or a state of opposition.’  It is the power by which Satan wishes to reign over us.  Pride is essentially competitive in nature.  We pit our will against God’s.  When we direct our pride toward God, it is in the spirit of ‘my will and not thine be done.’  Our will in competition to God’s will allows desires, appetites, and passions to go unbridled.  The antidote for pride is humility—meekness, submissiveness.”  Such descriptive words as yield, submit, meek, patient, and humility reflect qualities a person develops as they willingly surrender their will to God’s.  The process of surrendering personal will to God’s will can be expressed in a vast variety of ways.  One of the most challenging is when encountering a situation that is beyond one’s ability to determine a desired outcome.  These desired outcomes can take many forms but the crux of each is always the same; my will versus God’s.  In my lifetime I have experienced or observed such situations; the death of a loved one, job loss, personal tragedy, pain caused by the actions of another, the impact of suicide, debilitating or chronic health issues, unrequited love, unfulfilled hope for marriage or children, children rejecting parental values, a child that requires lifelong and extraordinary care, marital discord and/or divorce, unfulfilled aspirations, abject loneliness, injustice, and unexpected upheaval or catastrophe that drastically changes personal circumstances.  When encountering these types of situations, it is not uncommon for one to reach heavenward for relief.  Prayers become more urgent and intense.  Acute personal desires motivate and shape these kinds of prayers.  Such prayers may not only define the desired outcome but also include a timeframe for which one could expect completion.  While such feelings are natural and understandable, they do not reflect a recognition of, or submission to, God’s greater love, understanding, wisdom, perspective and purposes.  Divine surrender lets go of any personally desired outcome, regardless of how much it is desired.  Letting go surrenders the outcome itself, in addition to the how and when, completely to the Lord.  This measure of trust will not only please the Lord but also produce the best possible outcome for the individual, from an eternal perspective.