surrender

By demanding that God fix the places I have surrendered, while not surrendering other places, I am in contradiction. I have been practically and emotionally frustrated. I need to give God everything else, that He might work in "every sphere," having my whole life. To ask God to make me whole in a few areas without surrendering the whole rest of me is ridiculous, nay, ludicrous - it is actually laughable when you think about it. It makes no sense, yet here am I living life all this time in contradiction. Weird...
That was something I wrote several weeks ago. Yet surrender is a decent theme any day, I think, for the man or woman of God. How oft it is forgotten when nothing save love (as if they were actually all that different, surrender and love) is more central to the person of Christ. Everything needs to be surrendered to Jesus. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me! This life I now live in the flesh I live [only] by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave [read: surrendered] Himself for me! He gave His all and He wants me! This includes my life, my future, my perceptions, my intellect, all that jazz. But those are all peripheral to, all components of, me. My identity is found in, evidenced by, those things, but it is not those things. My identity is an heir of the Most High, a Son of the King. I need to actively surrender my identity to Christ; to actively see Him formed in me; to actively embrace His assumptions, His perceptions, His will, His desires, His life, His death, His resurrection, His mind, His priorities, His reality, His joy, His peace, His Spirit as my own. Rather more than that, to actively subordinate my own to His. To actively embrace His will on earth as if it were in heaven. Notice how active surrender is? I've nearly always surrendered myself to God, at least passively: "Alright God, you take the initiative and I'll do everything I can to obey." Folks, God already took the initiative, why do we sit around as if He hasn't already paid the price, bridged the gap, and empowered all who would believe? If you want to surrender, leave out the caveat and just "do everything I can to obey." He has manifested Himself already, go to the Source! He has spoken and His word echoes through eternity! You think it's any different now than it was then? YOU'RE WRONG! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So get after it, Jesus says to me. Literally subjugate every thought and YOU MAKE IT captive to the obedience of Christ. Hmm... perhaps the Bible actually means precisely what it says.
That's what gets me in all this - I do not live as if it were true. I'd never say anything to the contrary, yet I live in denial. "Hypocrite" isn't such a foreign concept to this man of God. I don't pray this, don't ask for that, don't expect His promises - all because I doubt my identity as Beloved, as a Prince, as a Son of the Most High, the King of Glory. If I were truly as Christ is, if I knew it through and through, I would not balk or doubt or tarry. I *refuse* to live that shadow of a life any longer. I refuse to rest in a quagmire of uncertainty and doubt. I refuse thinly veiled pride masquerading as humility. And I refuse to let any created thing stand between me and the fullness of Christ, especially my own Saul of a self. I *will* surrender, and I *will* trust in God and in His word. You *WILL* bless the Lord, O my soul!