unconditional surrender means I don't have anything to say about this except yes.
And you know, people can take that wrong and think that that's wrong, but it's the way
that God worked it.
It's the way that He planned for us to be able to work with Him.
And it only works to work with Him when we do it His way.
When we try to do it our way, it doesn't work.
God promises in Joel 2.28 to pour out His Spirit on all humanity.
Welcome to Global Outpouring.
We contend for that promised outpouring.
We equip for that outpouring so that we may engage in that very outpouring.
I'm Philip Bus.
And I'm Sharon Bus.
Welcome to the podcast today.
We're so grateful to the Lord that you have joined us.
We have a subject today that we feel is very important, and I believe it's going to be
life changing for you.
You know, life is a series of surrenders.
And we have on our heart to share about unconditional surrender to God.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
We're so grateful to the Lord that you are with us.
We just feel like we're getting knit in our hearts to your heart, even though we may or
may not hear back from you.
And we would love to hear back from you.
But we really feel like God is doing something, establishing relationships.
And these are eternal relationships that we are going to have for all of eternity for
how the Lord wants to use us together in His kingdom.
So before we get started, if you haven't already done so, we encourage you to go to our website,
GlobalOutpouring.net and make sure that you have subscribed to our email lists.
This is a way that we can stay in touch with you and keep you informed of what's going
on and what we're doing and and the new podcasts that are coming out and other things that
we're doing the events that we're having those kind of things.
And you can explore our website and see all of the wonderful things that we have there
for you to help you grow in your experience with God.
So Philip, let's talk about unconditional surrender to God.
Oh, that's that's a hollelujah.
Well, yes, it is because it really is all about letting go of your self way.
You know, we don't like to do that.
Well, it's true.
We don't.
Our flesh is always at war with our spirit and our spirit is the real us.
Your spirit is the real you.
My spirit is the real me.
We see that in in Romans, Chapter seven, that there's this war going on in the flesh.
But the Holy Spirit helps us because when we invite Jesus to come into our lives, our
spirit becomes one spirit with His spirit.
Yeah.
And it's a determination.
It's like if you're trying to tone your muscles up, if you're an athlete, you know, you're
you're not going to miss a day, are you?
Because you can maybe feel the difference if you didn't do all your stretches or things
like that.
You know, yeah.
And for those of us who have not kept up with our our exercises and you pay for it down
the road, yeah, you get soft and you get you get where things aren't working the way they
should.
So if you keep sharp doing your exercises, you keep your body in shape and spiritually,
it's the same way.
But it's a choosing.
I'm going to do this every day or I'm going to choose this.
They're even a diet.
I'm going to I'm choosing to do this.
I'm putting my mind set on doing this.
And no matter what temptations I have, I'm I'm not going to eat that cookie or, you know,
or something just happens to go by your nose when you're somewhere and that this determination
not to do that and unconditional surrender to God is determination.
Yes, it.
But it's also determination.
And even even what you're talking about in the physical, you know, we have such a thing
as willpower and we also have such a thing called willpower.
Like I won't do that.
I'm not going to do that.
Or, you know, you just you cave sometimes you cave in to temptation of, you know, for
that cookie or whatever it is.
And the wonderful thing about relationship with God is he gives you the grace to obey.
Yeah.
And he gives you the grace really to surrender.
He gives you the grace to lay down your will over and over and over.
And you may not just see results right quick away.
True.
Like I'll do this and I'll have the answer tomorrow.
No, it doesn't usually work that way unless God just really graces you for something like
that.
But it's it's like they say if you do something for 21 days, it's a habit.
And so it's just pressing into, you know, pressing into the word.
And sometimes you can't just always set a pattern because patterns don't always work.
But you have to make time somehow.
Right.
And you know, the apostle Paul, you know, wasn't able to snuggle away in a nice first
class in an airplane or you're on one of the earlier trains that had real locking compartments
and had a sleeper in it where you could lock away because it's a two day train ride.
You know, he didn't use maybe have that option.
He didn't have any options.
I don't think he even had an option to hide away in a cave much.
Yeah, I didn't have an alarm clock to wake him up.
You know, so so it's it's a matter, you know, not beating yourself over the head.
If you if you miss your window, you just make up for it in another way.
Just well, it's all about surrendering.
Yeah.
Moment by moment.
Yeah.
It's that OK, I give in.
I can't do this on my own.
I need your help, Lord.
It's that grace that God gives you to be able to do something that you don't want to do
in your natural way.
Yeah.
So.
So our life is a series of surrenders.
Absolutely.
So we want to talk a little on Sister Gwen's story.
Yes.
Our founder, Sister Gwen Shaw, we call her Sister Gwen because that's just kind of how
the Pentecostal way is.
She wasn't a sister like in Roman Catholicism.
She was just everybody's sister.
And later in life, people started calling her mama and overseas to India.
Many of these nations, it's an honor, respect.
Right.
And in India, they would call you Auntie.
Auntie.
Yes.
Anyway, our founder had a series of surrenders in her life.
And we won't take time to tell her whole story because she wrote it in a book called Unconditional
Surrender.
And we have a video of her as well that that was made in the 1990s.
And we've put it out on our YouTube channel, also called Unconditional Surrender.
It's in three parts of about 45 minutes each.
Very, very, very inspiring because that was her thing with God.
She just had unconditional surrender.
She kept surrendering.
And unconditional surrender in a life is you keep on surrendering to God.
No matter what comes up, no matter how your flesh says, no, I don't want to do this, you
just keep saying yes, because I've said yes to God.
And if God is saying this to me, I'm going to do what he said to do.
And Sister Gwen's story is just a piece of it.
I think we've told some of this before where she was in Bible school.
She had already made that first surrender to say yes to Jesus, to come into her life.
She'd been a rebel.
She ran away from home.
I mean, she didn't like to be teased because of having learned all these scriptures as
a child.
Her mother would stand her up and have her memorize scriptures so that she could say
them in church.
And so all of that stuff was being put into her.
But when she got into her teens, she really rebelled and ran away from home.
And finally, she gave her life to Jesus.
And it was transformative.
She surrendered.
It was amazing because the place she was hiding was next door to the police station.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
Well, don't find me here.
Yeah, they didn't.
Her daddy found her, though, because he was led by the Holy Spirit.
And she went home and she submitted and then she gave her life to Jesus.
And then she went to Bible school.
And during Bible school, there was a tremendous move of God that was sparked by a man who
had come from Azusa Street.
He had been at Azusa Street and his life had been transformed as he surrendered to God.
And she was in a prayer meeting in the middle of the night and someone was under the power
of the Holy Spirit crying out, China, China, I'm calling you to China.
Won't you go for me to China?
Souls are perishing in China, China, China.
Oh, won't you go to China for me?
So she's in this meeting hearing this and she doesn't want to acknowledge that.
That's not me.
And then a teacher that was there said, Gweny, have you prayed about this call?
She said no.
So she got down on her knees and she began to feel like, oh, this is me.
This is calling me.
She got back up on her chair because she was afraid she didn't she didn't want to do this.
She was afraid of the Chinese.
She was only what?
Twenty years old.
Yeah, probably, probably about that age.
And so the teacher asked her again because the call went on China, China, I'm calling
you to China.
Won't you go for me to China?
Souls are perishing in China.
And the teacher said, did you pray through, Gweny?
And she said no.
She got down on her knees again and she began to feel this thing going in her spirit about
this is you.
This is my calling for you.
And she got so afraid and she got back up in her chair and she said, God, if this is
if this is me, you're going to have to put me on my knees.
And the next thing she knew, the power of God came down and just threw her on the floor
and pender.
Yeah.
And she screamed, oh, go, go.
And then then she had visions of China speaking in Chinese language.
And all of a sudden she loved the Chinese people.
And instead of the clock going tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, it went China, China,
China.
And God took her there, another series of surrenders and just one surrender after another
surrender after another surrender.
And yeah, and it's like, you know, going to a country like that, it was not like America.
Now, you see China today as a world power.
Back then, it was a third world nation and very primitive.
Oh, yes, it was very primitive.
So if you want to know more about the rest of Sister Gwen's story, you can get her book
or you can go to our YouTube channel and watch the videos.
It's just it's really, really encouraging.
It will encourage you to follow the Lord in the thing that he's called you to do, because
each one of us has to have our own unconditional surrender.
So Psalm 37, seven, and the God's word translation says, surrender yourself to the Lord and wait
patiently for him.
Do not be preoccupied with an evil doer who succeeds in his way when he carries out his
schemes.
Yeah.
In the King James, it says, rest in the Lord and wait patiently for him.
But I like this idea of surrendering because that's really what resting in him is.
It's a letting go.
It's a, okay, I'm taking my hands off of this.
I'm not going to try and make this happen.
God, if you want it to happen, you make it happen.
Because if you surrender to him, then you are at rest.
Exactly.
And, and you stop fretting about the evil doers.
When you're surrendered to God, you stop fretting about them because you know that God is going
to deal with them.
And part of the reason why he waits so long before he deals with them is he's giving them
an opportunity to repent and do their own surrender to God.
And many times they do.
Many times they don't.
But we can't be overwhelmed with anger and anxiety over what evil doers are doing.
Yeah.
There's a good scripture about anxiety.
That's in Psalm 46 and verse 10.
This is in the passion translation.
Surrender your anxiety, be still and realize that I am God.
I am God above all the nations and I am exalted throughout the whole earth.
Surrender your anxiety.
Yes.
Because it's fear that causes us to be tormented.
And we read in first John that perfect love casts out fear.
Perfect love casts out fear.
You know, surrendering to his perfect love, it's kind of like it pulls the plug and fear
goes down the drain.
When you surrender to the love of God.
Beautiful.
He pulls up inside of us and he, and he envelops us in himself.
And you know, why would you have fear?
Yeah.
So Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 16 24, if any of you wants to be my follower,
you must give up your own way.
Take up your cross and follow me.
So when we are dedicating ourselves to the Lord, he said to his disciples, take up your
cross and follow me.
Now we don't really get it, what that means or what it would have meant to the disciples
that he said it to because the cross was a very big reality in their culture.
They were, they were overtaken by the Romans and that, that was Rome's way of execution.
So anybody that misbehaved was crucified in front of everybody, they'd hang them up right
along the road so that everybody would see what, what happens to you.
If you come against what we want you to do, you are going to die.
And this is the horrible death you're going to die.
Terrible suffering, terrible, terrible, just awful.
So when Jesus said that to his disciples, they must have had a hard time wrapping their
heads around it because they didn't realize at that time that he was going to be crucified.
It made more sense later to them like, oh, oh, we have to take up our cross too.
If anyone wants to be my disciple.
So there's something deeper about discipleship that we don't necessarily get in our church
culture about really laying our lives down.
I remember when I turned 18 and I've told this story before, but it bears retelling.
I think that just days after my 18th birthday, my sister told me that she wanted to take
me out to lunch for my birthday.
And she took me to a ladies luncheon where Gwen Shaw was the speaker.
And while I'm listening to sister Gwen, I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, I want you,
I want you 100% and I want you right now.
It wasn't an ouch to me.
It was something that made perfect sense in my spirit.
And I didn't think about it very long.
I just said, yes, because I knew it was God.
I knew that this was God speaking to me.
And so I just said, yes.
And then, you know, as a little time went by, I kind of thought, well, I've already
got a scholarship.
I think I'll just go to college for one year and then I'll serve God.
And then a few weeks later, I went to the first world convention of the end time handmaidens.
So those events were that close.
They were that close.
Yeah.
And my birthday is in April and Memorial Day weekend was the convention.
So it was the end of May.
And so it was very close.
But you know, in that little time, I had said yes to God and then I waffled and didn't even
realize I was waffling.
It didn't dawn on me that when he said, I want you right now, meant right now.
Somehow I thought I can, I can dawdle around for a year.
Procrastination.
I guess that's what it is, procrastination.
So during that convention, I heard in my, no, I didn't even hear it in my spirit.
I had a knowing in my knower.
Nobody prophesied anything.
It wasn't in words, but I had a knowing in my knower that if I went on to college, if
I went on to that music school, I was not ever going to serve God.
And so I surrendered again.
And through the years, from time to time, I have had that thought come back to me about,
I want you 100% and I want you right now.
It's kind of like through the years, 100% has become more than it was at the beginning.
And I don't know how to explain that.
We've been in ministry for all these years.
Can I do what I want to do now?
Yeah, it, it, it, it isn't, it isn't that.
It doesn't work that way.
It does not work that way.
Unconditional surrender means I don't have anything to say about this except yes.
And you know, people can take that wrong and think that that's wrong, but it's the way
that God worked it.
It's the way that he planned for us to be able to work with him.
And it only works to work with him when we do it his way.
When we try to do it our way, it doesn't work.
Yeah, that's, we found that out.
Yeah, we found it out.
We find that out many times too often.
Yeah, it's true.
So what, what happened to you?
Where was your moment of surrender, Philip?
Well, my moment of surrender, that's when, when everything is taken away that you call
dear to yourself.
Car got repossessed and was a start of it.
Then in sports, I loved the bowl and my bowl, God, God took my bowling average away.
I mean, he sovereignly just took it away where I couldn't win any money.
And, and I just dropped.
You know, when you drop hunt from a 180, I think it was 183 average to 167, that's disastrous.
That's like for a bowler.
That's like being on the bottom of the roster.
You know, you know, you're not going to be on the team next year.
You know, you know, it's serious.
And then you have your, I lost, lost my job.
Then my unemployment got cut off three months earlier than I realized.
And I had to make a drastic move, but God orchestrated that whole thing for his glory.
And within two weeks after that happened, I was on the course of where I was, what I
needed to do.
And what happened on Christmas Eve?
That's when I met you.
Yes, but, but, but the thought process that you went through when you're, when you're,
when you asked your mom, where are you going at 10 30 at night?
Where are you going?
And she said, we're going down to Angle Tall to give gifts to the staff girls.
And she said, do you want to go along?
Yeah.
So just quick nutshell, sister, Gwen, our founder, I knew her when I was about 12 years
old in the mid sixties in Chicago and my mom was her best friend.
So she would come over a lot.
My mom would go there, but you know, my teenage years, I start to backslide.
And so I started avoiding sister Gwen.
I mean, I just stay away.
I mean, I get dragged to our meetings because I lived under the roof of the house, but I
always try to sit in a safe place.
In the back row.
Yeah.
If you can find a post and sit behind it, that's a nice thing too, you know, and all
that.
And so I avoided her for years.
And so now I'm 26 years old.
And I thought, as Sharon said, you know, well, it's 10 30 at night.
It's Christmas Eve.
There won't be a real holy roller prayer meeting going on.
I'm a big boy now.
You know, I need to face the music.
I'm an adult.
You know, I think that was a surrender.
That was a surrender.
And so I went down the hill and Sharon's the one that opened the door.
And that's a whole nother story.
And we can put a link to that story in the show notes.
And I've never was the same since.
Yeah.
And then you stayed for another extra week.
I stayed an extra week.
Ended up helping in the print shop.
And Sharon was working in the print shop of the ministry.
She had taken it over.
So I was helping that a little bit in the last second week.
And I felt this is where I'm supposed to be.
I had a real piece.
You know, when you're uncomfortable, if things aren't going right, you feel depressed.
You know, that's a normal thing, it seems like anxiety, you know, this, this, that and
all that stuff just left.
And just like I know, this is where I'm supposed to be.
Went back home, started a 21 day fast, wrap my whole life up in the city.
And that actually went an extra seven days.
And that's in the story.
It has to 28 days and got catapulted as a green, what do you call a newbie in the ministry?
Yeah, it's true.
And it was just surrender after surrender.
Yeah.
How many times have you surrendered?
And it's still surrender.
We still have like daily surrenders.
What Paul said, I die daily.
Or I surrender daily.
Yeah, I think that's a good way to say it too.
That's a good way to say it.
Proverbs three, five and six says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not
on your own understanding and all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths.
If you want God to direct your paths, it's that acknowledging of him and surrendering
to him, letting go of the way you think and saying, okay, Lord, I'll do it your way.
Yeah.
And Psalms nine, 10, this is in the new King James version.
And those who know your name will put their trust in you for you Lord have not forsaken
those who seek you or that be for you, Yehovah.
I have not forsaken those who seek you.
Yes.
So trusting is a part of surrender.
That's where the grace is.
The grace to trust comes into you and gives you the grace to surrender where you just
say, okay, I'm done.
I give it to you.
You lay it down.
You lay down your life.
It's part of the humbling yourself in the side of the Lord where you're surrendering.
You're saying, okay, your way.
And his way is always better than our ways.
I mean, always.
Amazing how that works.
That's because his ways are so much higher than our ways and he can see from a whole
different perspective than we can.
We're down here groveling among the caterpillars and he's up there above the heavens, above
the cosmos.
And he knows all about the best way for this to go.
And he makes arrangements for that.
So Jesus in Luke 9, 22 to 26, Philip, would you read that from the Passion Translation?
The Son of Man is destined to experience great suffering and face complete rejection by the
Jewish leaders and religious hierarchy.
He will be killed and raised back to life on the third day.
Jesus said to all his followers, if you truly desire to be my disciple, you must disown
your life completely, embrace my cross as your own and surrender to my ways.
For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for my glory, you will discover
true life.
But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep.
Even if you gained all the wealth and power of this world and all the things it could
offer you, yet lost your soul in the process, what good is that?
So why then are you ashamed of being my disciple?
Are you ashamed of the revelation and truth I give to you?
I, the Son of Man, will one day return in my radiant brightness with the Holy Angels
and in the splendor and majesty of my Father.
On that day I will be ashamed of everyone who has been ashamed of me.
Yeah.
So that's what happens if we don't surrender.
If for some reason because of our pride or because of our fear, we choose not to obey.
It has to do with shaming him, really.
We're shaming him when we do that.
So the Lord is trying to help us to understand what it means to take up our cross, what it
means to lay down our lives.
A really good example is Peter.
You know, yes.
In John 13, where Jesus and his disciples are in the upper room for the Passover.
And the way that it works is if there's not a servant, then the person who has the least
seat at the table is supposed to wash the people's feet.
Don't you think Peter felt kind of rejected being put there?
Yes.
It's obvious.
If you understand the way that that was done in those days, it was done at what's called
a triclinium.
In other words, it's three tables or it's tables in a U shape that they recline at.
So it's a triclinium.
They're reclining in this three table situation.
And the only way for the conversation that went on would be Jesus would be on the side
where he would kind of be facing the wall and his back to others.
And John would be next to him.
And when they would feed one, they would feed one another as a part of this.
And they would dip into the bowl and lean back on the chest of the person next to them
and give them something to eat, which is what Jesus did for Judas.
So we know that it was John and then Jesus and then Judas.
And when Jesus said, one of you is going to betray me, the only way for John and Peter
to have had that little connection where Peter's saying, ask him who it is.
He maybe made a signal to it.
Yeah.
Maybe just mouthed it.
Or just mouthed it.
And the only way for them to see each other would be if Peter was in that least place
on the other end of the triclinium, on the third side.
So Peter was supposed to wash the feet of the disciples.
And when Jesus got up and girded himself with a towel and went around and washed everybody's
feet, Peter was the last one he got to.
And Peter says, Lord, you're not going to wash my feet because he knew he was supposed
to have washed everybody's feet and he didn't.
So Jesus said to him, you do not understand now what I'm doing, but you will understand
later on.
And Peter said, you'll never wash my feet.
He said, unless I wash you, you have no part in me.
You have no share in my companionship with me.
This is from the Amplified Classic.
So then later on in that chapter, in chapter 13, Peter says to Jesus, Lord, where are you
going?
Jesus answered, you are not able to follow me now where I'm going, but you shall follow
me afterwards.
Peter said to him, Lord, why cannot I follow you now?
I will lay down my life for you.
Jesus answered, will you really lay down your life for me?
I assure you most solemnly, I tell you before a rooster crows, you will deny me, completely
disown me three times.
So this is losing face in front of over and over for me.
I mean, he's already in the servant seat.
And after all, he's one of the chosen, right?
Peter, James, Peter, James and John.
He was first on the list.
He saw the transfiguration of Jesus.
He's one of the top boys.
Yes, he is.
And all of a sudden he's in the servant seat.
Yes, he's in the servant seat.
He doesn't do his job.
And he's not comfortable.
Well, why should I do this job when I'm one of the?
Yeah, I'm going to be the big guy after this.
It's like cleaning the toilets just after you've been put in as assistant pastor.
Exactly.
So, you know, Peter had this want to, to give his life for Jesus.
He was bold in his words.
He was bold in his spirit.
But his flesh had a problem.
His flesh said, no.
And then he had this blunder where he, he lopped off the ear of the high priest servant
and Jesus healed him and said, no, put it away.
This isn't the time for that.
So you know, it's just like slam after slam after slam.
And so his, his whole soul has been wounded in this time.
And then he gets to where he's being challenged.
Oh, you're one of them.
He says, no, I'm not.
I don't know that man.
Three times he denies him and Jesus looks at him as if to say, I told you so.
You know, so he went through all of these things.
This is, this is where you don't have the grace to surrender.
But then when Jesus came back, when he was resurrected from the dead, he meets the disciples
in Galilee and in chapter 21 of John, Jesus meets them with fresh fish cooking for breakfast.
And he says to Peter, do you love me?
And in that word, he used, he uses the word agape.
Do you agape me?
And Peter says, you know that I feelio you, you know that I'm buddy buddy with you.
You're my friend.
And Jesus says, feed my lambs.
You can handle that much.
Feed my lambs.
And then he says it again.
Do you agape me?
And he says, Lord, you know, I'm your friend.
And then he says, feed my sheep.
And then he says, now, Peter, do you really feelio me?
Are you really my buddy?
Peter's grieved now because now Jesus has brought the bar down.
You know, the bar, the high bar is the agape love.
And it was the third time too.
Yeah, and it was the third time.
And so he's saying, so are you really my buddy?
Are you really my friend?
Now Peter's grieved and he says, you know that I love you.
You know that I feelio you.
And he says in verse 18, this is from the Amplified Classic.
I assure you most solemnly, I tell you when you were young, you girded yourself, put on
your own belt or girdle and you walked wherever you pleased to go.
But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will put a girdle
around you and carry you where you do not wish to go.
He said this to indicate by what kind of death Peter would glorify God.
And after this, he said to him, follow me.
Well that's what he said to him in the first place.
And it's like, okay, Peter, you had a really bad day.
It's time to get over it.
Come and follow me.
Just follow me.
That's what happens whenever we blunder, whenever we have a problem.
And we did a whole podcast about the blunder.
We can maybe put a link to that in the show notes.
The thing that made the difference for Peter was when he was filled with the Holy Spirit
on the day of Pentecost.
And then the preacher came out.
Yeah, yeah.
Talk about a transformation.
It was a transformation.
The soulish Peter had surrendered and gone back to follow him again.
The idea is that every time you blunder, you get up quickly and you go back and you follow.
When you're trying to maintain a sense of the presence of the Lord and you realize,
oops, I'm not thinking about him.
I better come back.
You just come back.
You just come back fast.
Come back quickly.
And it's not like the Lord holds that against you when you've missed it.
When you repent, he forgives you and you just go back to following.
So Peter, in the book of Acts, he was filled with the Holy Spirit and he became bold.
There was a boldness that came on him.
And that gives you the grace.
The grace and the boldness comes from the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit in you will give you that grace and boldness.
And Peter was arrested three times.
Yeah.
Three times.
And he got to rescue by an angel.
Yeah, the third time.
I think all the times he got rescued.
I mean, God just sovereignly rescued him every single time.
So yeah, so if God has spoken a plan over your life, you know, that as long as you're
walking and surrendering to him, he'll make sure you get there.
Absolutely.
And Peter had to lay his life down by way of crucifixion.
There's a legend or a story that was told in the early church that Peter went to Rome
and when he got there, I don't know how long he was there if it's even true, because it's
not recorded in the Bible, but it's according to tradition.
He was there and persecution was on its way to him.
They were after him and he was fleeing from Rome on the Appian Way.
And the story goes that as he's walking away from Rome, he sees Jesus, he meets Jesus on
the road.
He says, Jesus, where are you going?
Col vadis is what they say in Latin.
Where are you going?
And Jesus says, I'm on my way to Rome to be crucified again.
And Peter realized that, okay, this is my time.
I'm going back.
I'm going to surrender my life.
I'm not going to deny him again.
I'm going to go and be crucified with him.
And so he went back and he was apprehended.
And when it came time for his execution, he said, I am not worthy to be crucified the
same way that my Lord was, crucify me upside down.
And that's how he laid down his life.
That point is that it's the surrender that comes when you yield to the power of the Holy
Spirit in your life.
And you just give your life because if Jesus is worth living for, he's worth dying for.
And it just means giving him all of your life, letting him deal with how your life is going
to end here on this planet and continue in heaven.
Hebrews chapter two, verses 14 and 15.
Philip, would you read that in the passion translation?
Since all his children have flesh and blood, so Jesus became human to fully identify with
us.
He did this so that he could experience death and annihilate the effects of the intimidating
accuser who holds against us the power of death.
By embracing death, Jesus sets free those who live their entire lives in bondage to
the tormenting dread of death.
Yeah.
The same scripture in the Amplified Classic says, since therefore these his children share
in flesh and blood, in the physical nature of human beings, he himself in a similar manner
partook of the same nature that by going through death, he might bring to naught and make of
no effect him who had the power of death, that is the devil.
And also that he might deliver and completely set free all those who through the haunting
fear of death were held in bondage throughout the whole course of their lives.
The point here is that the fear of death keeps you in bondage.
So fear has to be surrendered.
You have to surrender your fear.
You have to surrender your anxiety.
You have to give it to him as you even get grace from him to give it to him.
He gives you the grace to go through whatever it is you have to go through.
Whether it's a simple choice in life where you end up doing something you don't want
to do.
He gives you the grace for that.
Or whether it comes to that ultimate sacrifice of your life where, okay, this is how I'm
going to go to heaven.
I love what Dean Braxton says about death for the Christian.
It is you leave your body and your body dies.
And we've heard story after story of people who have had visions of those who have laid
down their lives for the Lord or just laid down their lives in an accident even.
And the one who has the vision sees the person leave their body before the accident happens.
We heard of somebody having that kind of a vision when they were praying about a friend
who lost their life on 9-11.
And she saw that lady who always came early to work to pray and she was standing in front
of the window praying as the airplane was coming.
And she saw that an angel came and took her out of her body before the airplane got there.
And this is part of the grace that comes with laying down your life.
I love what Jim Elliott said.
Jim Elliott was one of the five missionaries in Ecuador in the 1950s that were martyred
because they were trying to reach the Stone Age tribe that had never been reached with
the gospel and they were pretty fierce tribe.
And on that particular day something had happened to cause them to be really, really angry.
And these missionaries had landed there.
They had reached out many times sending gifts and it seemed like they were ready for a connection
with these people.
But an incident had happened to make this man really, really angry.
And he got there and speared Nate Saint.
He was the first one to go down.
And then later when some of the wives and children of these men had gone to that tribe
and brought them the gospel and many were getting saved and turning their lives over
to Jesus, this man who had killed Nate Saint, and I don't know if he killed all of them,
but he killed the first one and that just lit the other guys up to kill everybody.
So he came under conviction of the Holy Spirit and he stepped up to become like a dad to
Nate Saint's son, Stephen.
And he wrote a book about it called The End of the Spear and they made a movie from the
book.
So you can see the movie or you can read the book, tremendous, tremendous story.
But it was a life surrender that these five gave that they paid the ultimate price from
our point of view.
But what it did was it brought the entire tribe to Jesus.
So laying down your life, as long as you have given your fear of death to the Lord, He's
going to give you the grace to be able to lay down your life and to give you what it
takes to have that full surrender.
So it's that daily surrender, daily surrender, daily surrender.
So Father, we ask you to give the listeners that grace to say yes to you, to say, yes,
I will give myself 100%.
I will give myself unconditionally.
I will not keep my conditions like I will do this if you do that, but to lay down our
lives unconditionally so that you can do everything that you want to do through us.
It's that kind of unconditional surrender, Lord, that will cause us to be fillable, that
you can fill us with your purposes, that you can fill us with your light and your life
and your love to give freely even to those who would persecute us.
Lord, we ask you for that overwhelming, overflowing grace to go into each listener, Lord, and
bring each and every one into a deeper relationship with you.
That is that agape love that is more than just being a buddy, but that kind of love
that totally surrenders to you in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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Until next time, this is Sharon Buss.
And I'm Philip Buss.
And bless you with this overwhelming, loving presence.