Submission; surrender; death to self; all of these words seem to denote a very powerful experience. Whether it is from the Islamic tradition or the Christian, the thought is the same: God is god, we are not; and this is the process of realizing it!

We acknowledge His supremacy in both our lives and the world. He reigns supreme. He is worthy of all our praise and service. He is love and we trust Him.

I have been blessed this morning with some powerful words from Richard Foster about this very thing. In speaking of the prayer of Relinquishment, he says that it “is a bona fide letting go, but it is a release with hope. We have no fatalist resignation. We are buoyed up by a confident trust in the character of God. Even when all we see are the tangled threads on the backside of life’s tapestry we know that God is good and is out to do us good always. That gives us hope to believe that we are the winners, regardless of what we are being called upon to relinquish. God is inviting us deeper in and higher up. There is training in righteousness, transforming power, new joys, deeper intimacy.” [Prayer Treasury, by Richard Foster, page 52]

Further on in the process of relinquishing or submitting we realize over and over again that we have some challenging issues, however, in making that a reality. Actually, we can’t make it a reality. We can choose, but only He can make it work. So, what do we choose? To die to self, to surrender, to “islam” (the word in Arabic literally means to submit or surrender); whichever version you prefer, the process will be similar. And, it will hurt. Soren Kierkegaard says, “God creates everything out of nothing — and everything which he is to use he first reduces to nothing.” Ouch!

It will be the death of self and all its “hyphenated sins.” Or, again, as Foster relates, “It means freedom from what A.W. Tozer called ‘the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit.’ It means freedom from the self-sins: self-sufficiency, self-pity, self-absorption, self-abuse, self-aggrandizement, self-castigation, self-deception, self-exaltation, self-depreciation, self-indulgence, self-hatred, and a host of others just like them. It means freedom from the everlasting burden of always having to get our own way. It means freedom to care for others, to genuinely put their needs first, to give joyfully and freely.” [ibid. page 54]

Read those again. Freedom from SELF:
SELF. . .sufficiency,
SELF. . .pity,
SELF. . .absorption,
SELF. . .abuse,
SELF. . .aggrandizement,
SELF. . .castigation,
SELF. . .deception,
SELF. . .exaltation,
SELF. . .depreciation,
SELF. . .indulgence,
SELF. . .hatred.

WOW! Have you experienced any of those? Of course we have. Want to be free from all of them?

Wouldn’t life be powerful without needing to worry about them because they are dead and we are alive to a new life of power, passion, peace, purpose, and praise! I long to remain in that second list.

POWER, PASSION, PEACE, PURPOSE, and PRAISE!

Oh God, thank you for setting us free from those hyphenated sins and giving us new life and purpose in You!