Supernatural Transformation: Change Your Heart Into God’s Heart (27 page)

Their attitude separates them from the Father’s heart because God sees Christ in us not necessarily in the miracles He performs through our lives or in the good deeds we do but in each act of surrender in which we fully submit to Him and His will. Let us remember Jesus’ warning:
“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’”
(Matthew 7:22–23).

Willing Surrender Versus Unwilling Surrender

There are those who “commit” to God but never truly surrender to Him. Surrendering goes much deeper than even commitment, because it compels a person to address the deepest part of his rebellion against God. There is a great difference between willing surrender and unwilling surrender. For example, a soldier may commit to military service because his country is at war and his government has instituted a draft, and there is no other option for him than to serve, because he does not want to go to prison. However, his heart may not be in alignment with the reasons why his country is at war or with his own participation in that war. The entire time he serves, the soldier may be internally rebelling against his obligation. If he could walk away from the commitment, he would not hesitate to do so. Likewise, a person may commit to God in order to avoid punishment in hell but never truly surrender his heart out of deep love for God and a devotion to His purposes.

A person will not rise any higher than his level of surrender.

The Surrendered Heart Yields Its Rights

One dictionary definition of
surrender
is “to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand.” That definition corresponds to the illustration of the drafted soldier we discussed above. Another definition of
surrender
is “to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another.” This definition seems to correspond more closely to our act of surrender to God. Surrender involves giving up the demands of the “self” and the sinful nature in favor of what God wants for us, and giving up our own rights and desires in favor of what would be best for those whom we are called to serve in His name.

I often like to define surrender in this way: “to deny ‘self’ by choice and conviction,” and “to give up one’s rights to God.” A person whose heart is yielded to God has given up his doubt, unbelief, personal ego, and reliance on his own strength; he has given total control of his life to God. He has moved beyond the natural realm in order to live in the supernatural. He has died to his fears and insecurities so that he may
“live by faith in the Son of God”
(Galatians 2:20) and be
“transformed…from glory to glory”
(2 Corinthians 3:18).

Surrendering our heart to God is one of the greatest acts of faith, because when we think that we have the “right” to hold on to something, it is very difficult for us to understand why we must relinquish it. Surrender has to do with completely trusting the assurances of God’s Word that yielding to our heavenly Father will bring forth real, significant, and eternal blessings for us. Faith required for this type of surrender is rooted in a love for God and in an acceptance of the fact that He has promised we will receive back much more than we yield to Him. (See, for example, Matthew 6:33; Mark 10:29–30; Luke 6:38.)

When we surrender our rights and needs to God, we will receive back much more than we yield to Him.

In our society, we hear much about “rights” yet little about responsibility and maturity. The fact is that we cannot expect to have rights without fulfilling our responsibilities; and we cannot assume responsibilities unless our character is mature. If you fulfill your responsibilities in your relationship with God, and if you yield your rights in order to do His will, you will be able to claim the rights that Christ won for you by His surrender and obedience on the cross of Calvary, where He redeemed humanity from the curse of rebellion. Among those rights—of which we are heirs (see Romans 8:17)—are salvation, healing, deliverance, prosperity, peace, and joy. Remember that we don’t have these rights by deserving them. We have them only because they are given to us through Christ.

A person whose heart is surrendered to God has moved beyond the natural realm in order to live in the supernatural.

The Surrendered Heart Activates the “Law of Exchange”

In the spiritual world, the “law of exchange” means the following: The measure in which you die to “self” is the measure in which God’s life will increase and manifest in you; the measure in which you give of yourself to God, yielding to Him through His grace, is the measure in which He will give of Himself to you, with all His blessings. God will receive you if you have surrendered to Him, so that you can receive Him through the life and power that He “yields” to you.

We know that human beings have legitimate inherent rights and needs, such as the right to life and to having their bodily needs met—food, shelter, sleep, and so forth. However, when a person surrenders to God and his life is centered on Christ, as well as on the needs of other people, even these rights and needs take second place. As John the Baptist said,
“
[Jesus]
must increase, but I must decrease”
(John 3:30).

Much of modern Christianity teaches that we will receive God’s blessings “free of charge”—meaning, without any responsibility on our part. This is a false mentality. Nothing is free! Salvation is free for us solely because Christ paid the price for sin—a price that was impossible for any human being to pay. But salvation and every other aspect of a life of faith require our surrender to God. Some people in the church want all of God’s blessings without having to obey Him, submit to Him, pray to Him, give tithes or offerings to Him, or seek His face. They want to “use” God for their purposes, as if He were in their employ, or as if He owed them something! They maintain this attitude due to their erroneous ideas about God’s grace.

Read what the apostle Paul wrote about his walk with God:
“By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain;
but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me
”
(1 Corinthians 15:10). Everything we receive from God is according to His supernatural grace. However, that doesn’t mean there is nothing for us to do; without our surrender and personal participation in God’s purposes, the giving of that grace would be in vain.

In the “law of exchange,” the measure in which we give of ourselves to God is the measure in which He gives of Himself to us.

The Surrendered Heart Is a Sign of Spiritual Maturity

God’s principles of blessing will therefore be effective in our life as we surrender to Him our heart, our will, and our rights. Many people want to automatically “fix” everything that’s wrong in their life by using biblical principles as if they were magic formulas. But God’s power doesn’t work that way. Consequently, there are a number of people in the body of Christ today who are frustrated because they think they are applying biblical principles of prosperity, health, and other areas, but they never see any results because they have not fully surrendered to God. Many of these people live with the immature attitude of a spoiled child who refuses to assume responsibility for his actions but expects gifts and privileges anyway.

If implementing biblical principles were as simple as applying a formula, there would be no difference between God’s principles and the principles of magic, witchcraft, and other practices that are anti-Christ and anti-surrender of the “self.” True Christianity is about a relationship with our heavenly Father that leads us to reflect His very nature and life. It is not about speaking “magic words” through which we can achieve our own purposes, regardless of how good those purposes might seem.

The Surrendered Heart Freely Obeys and Yields by Choice

When we fully surrender “self,” our ongoing submission to God will not seem offensive to us, because we will be acting from our own free will. It won’t matter what we are called to do or what sacrifice is involved—we will obey. We will serve God joyfully out of love and deep conviction, without complaint.

The following is the testimony of a man named Frederic, who describes the blessings he received by surrendering his heart to God. He writes, “When I was a child, my father was a pastor. My entire family was involved in the church, and I evangelized with my mother. However, what I remember most was the way my father would beat my sisters, my mother, and me. He was an ex-member of the French Special Forces, with whom he had served for many years in Indochina, and he had returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“He used to tell me, ‘Men don’t cry,’ then beat me as if he were beating a soldier, saying that if I cried, he would kill me. After the beatings, he would not allow my mother to take me to the hospital or to tell anyone in the church about it, threatening to kill her if she did. He would often drag her before me and beat her while yelling, ‘What will you do, Son? Can you fight me and defend your mother?’ He also taught me martial training in which the objective of each movement was to break a bone of, and/or to kill, one’s opponent. By the time I was ten years old, I had suffered many fractures—of the teeth, nose, hip, ribs, wrists, ankles, fingers, and toes—as well as countless head injuries. In addition, my father raped and abused me until I turned seventeen, when he realized that I was no longer a child, and I almost killed him with his own technique.

“After that event, I was so afraid of what he would do that I left home and never returned or spoke to him again. I sought refuge with family members who had formed a criminal organization. They took me in and used the hate that I carried in my heart, and my fighting abilities, to do their dirty work. When I turned twenty-one, I discovered that the man who had raised me was not my biological father; he was my stepfather. He and my mother had brought me up because of a promise they had made to my real father, who had felt guilty for abandoning me. I never met my real father because he was killed only a few years before I discovered the truth. My world crumpled beneath me. I was so angry that I even tried to commit suicide by taking pills.

“I had money and fame, and I traveled from country to country consuming drugs and alcohol. Every relationship I was in failed. One day, my mother called to tell me that my stepfather had committed suicide. That made me even angrier, because I had waited many years for him to ask me to forgive him, and now that would never happen.

“In time, I met a Christian girl. We fell in love and moved in together. A little while after that, I lost my job and, with it, every opportunity to participate in the dirty work I had been doing. My ties with organized crime ended, but I didn’t care about anything, as long as I had the love of my woman. But then she told me that God had ordered her to leave me because we were going down different paths and she loved God more than she loved anyone else.

“One night, realizing that she was not about to change her mind, I cursed her, the church, and Apostle Maldonado. I declared that if God wanted war, I would go against Him and His church. But suddenly, and against my will, I fell to my knees and spent the entire night crying. In my mind, I heard a voice that said,
Surrender!
Later, I had a dream in which I was in a room without doors, fighting against a very strong Man. He fought me as if He knew every one of my moves, anticipating all of my attacks. He hurt me so much that the pain woke me. Then I heard a voice say,
Surrender now, and allow your heart to open up, so you can return to Me.

“The next day, I shared the dream with my girlfriend, and she invited me to church. During the ministry part of the service, tears began to flow from me. I felt very ashamed for crying in front of all those people, because I remembered my stepfather’s words that ‘men don’t cry.’ But I quickly stopped fighting it and said out loud, ‘I surrender!’ At that moment, I felt my heart come back to life, and I experienced an inner peace I didn’t recognize. I felt God’s love, and my soul was full of joy.

“Since that day, my life has been totally transformed. I apologized to the apostle, and he said to me, ‘You are my son, and I love you.’ Those words repaired the negative image I had of fathers, broke the curse of rejection, and even led me to forgive my father and stepfather. For more than thirty years, my heart had been as dead as a rock, but when I surrendered it to God, He gave me a new heart and filled it with His love.”

For the person who is fully surrendered to God, obedience and submission are not a “sacrifice” but a pleasure.

Attitudes That Can Hinder Surrender

Contrary to what many people think, surrender to God brings peace, joy, and purpose into our life. Accordingly, negative attitudes toward surrender and affirming attitudes toward “self” will block our surrender to Him. In the last chapter, we discussed how we cannot follow Christ and do His will if we have a rebellious, disobedient heart that seeks to please the sinful nature, or the “old man.” And, we saw that the only way to
“put off…the old man”
(Ephesians 4:22) and to
“put on the new man”
(Ephesians 4:24) is by crucifying the sinful nature. In contrast, much of modern psychology and psychiatry generally focuses on “improving” the self—not dying to it. These branches of human knowledge don’t start or end with God. They begin and end with “self,” or the human ego. They are based on the idea that man is his own ultimate source, and they place science in the position of supreme truth. However, humans were not created to be “gods” or to make the intellect their god.