Have you ever made any new year’s resolutions? Some of us have made resolutions not only for the new year but for the first day of the month, the first day of the week, our birthday, the beginning of the school year, and whenever we moved to a new town!

Righteousness by resolution. “From now on, I will …” or, “From now on, I will not… .” Have you ever done it? Have you ever been frustrated to discover that it doesn’t work?

We are talking about surrender in these next few theses, and one of the first basic principles of surrender is that if it does not include everything, it is not surrender at all. Surrender goes far deeper than giving up this or that bad habit. And even to say that we must surrender “everything” could be misleading. For surrender is not a matter of things at all. The only way we can give up everything is to give up on ourselves. The surrender of self is the basis of surrender.

When the Axis forces surrendered at the end of World War II, what did they surrender? Did they surrender just their guns and ammunition? Did they surrender just their tanks and hand grenades? Did they surrender just their uniforms and supplies? Or were they required to surrender themselves? And when they surrendered themselves, that automatically took care of the guns and bombs and tanks and all the rest.

Surrender cannot be done piecemeal. There is no such thing as partial surrender. It’s no more possible to be partially surrendered than it is possible to be a little bit pregnant. Either you are, or you aren’t. There is no middle ground.

If you study what the inspired writings to the church have to say you will find it described in all-or-nothing terms. Christ requires entire and unreserved surrender. See Selected Messages, bk. 1, p. 110.

Unconditional surrender. See Testimonies, vol. 4, p. 120.

Complete surrender. See The Ministry of Healing, p. 473.

The list goes on and on.

When we talk about surrender, we are using a term that the King James Version of the Bible does not use, although the idea of surrender is found there. The King James Version uses the word submit.

“Submit yourselves therefore to God” (James 4:7)

is an example that gives a major clue to what is involved in complete or entire or unreserved surrender. As we have noticed, we don’t just submit certain things. We submit ourselves. And in the process of submitting or surrendering self, whatever problems self has caused are automatically surrendered right along with the package.

Testimonies, volume 9, pages 182, 183, puts it this way:

“Each one will have a close struggle to over-come sin in his own heart. This is at times a very painful and discouraging work; because, as we see the deformities in our character, we keep looking at them, when we should look to Jesus and put on the robe of His righteousness. Everyone who enters the pearly gates of the city of God will enter there as a conqueror, and his greatest conquest will have been the conquest of self.”

Surrender and faith are closely related. Only when we trust God and surrender, or give up ourselves, to Him do we depend upon Him instead of ourselves. By surrendering to Him, we give Him control. He can then work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.