Surrendering to Who?

 The title seems obvious, doesn’t it? Surrender to God, of course, but, who is God? Well, He loves you, and this also seems obvious, and He is your father, but, when you think of a father, your mind goes back to your dad, and his imperfections. At least that’s what mine does. God has a passionate love for you, a love so strong that He created you. He wouldn’t have had to create you, but, create you He did. Why? Well, let’s go back, way back to our beginning. We can’t go back to God’s beginning, he has no beginning.

  In a vast expanse of nothingness, with no matter, and no time, there was a lonely God, this God, the only true God, the only God worthy of the capital G, decided to create a world, and so He did. In this world he placed a man and a woman, both representing His image in physical form to this new, glorious, beautiful world. The Lord sought a relationship, a free will love He bestowed on them both, and this love was returned by free will by these humans. For you see, the Lord gave them a garden, and in this garden, they were told to partake of all the plants and trees, save one, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The Lord did not instill fear into them by telling them of the horrors of eating from that tree. He wanted their love, and He gave them love, unspeakable, and unimaginable love.

 Unfortunately, the bad tree was eaten from, and the lovely new world was a wreck. The humans experienced a brand new emotion, fear, fear of being caught, fear of pain, fear of the wrath of God by sin. They had chosen knowledge, and now the price was already being paid. The world descended into chaos, kingdoms arose, all built on hierarchy, religions came, also built on hierarchy, wars came, plagues, death, pain, sorrow, unspeakable evils blemished the world, mankind failed to follow the law that they now knew, because they could not do it.

 God, all knowing and all wise, had a plan, to redeem everyone. So, in an unfathomable way, this God came to earth as a little baby, born into poverty, and he worked hard. He started to preach, he spoke of a new kingdom, that was not of this world, referred to as the kingdom of Heaven, or the kingdom of God. In this kingdom, there were no boundaries, it was not to be a violent kingdom establishing hierarchies, fighting over borders, and religion. It was to be an all encompassing kingdom of redeemed souls, loved by God, and this Lord would put His spirit within each redeemed soul. In this manner, the redeemed soul would be free, not to sin, which is its own punishment, but free from sin, and not redeemed to fear law, but redeemed to God, dead to the world and very much alive in God.

 This man, who was somehow 100% a man, and yet 100% the Lord, went by Jesus Christ, and He was the son of God. God, as it turns out is 3 and yet still 1. There is His spirit, His son, and Him. Yet He is one God. After only a few short years, the religious system of this day was so fed up with Christ that they talked the Roman Empire into dealing out His execution, and in typical Roman style it was brutal, a bloody lashing, designed to physically break a man, and inwardly crush his will, and then they nailed him to a cross, but before this they did something unspeakably cruel and illegal, after Jesus’ body was already smashed up from the beatings and lashings, they wove together a crown of thorns and smashed it into his skull, only then was He allowed to go to the cross and get the suffering and torment over with. He went to the cross, died and was buried.

 On the 3rd day, things went wild, somehow, the tombstone rolled away and Jesus was back, and this time He didn't use doors, He just showed up whenever and wherever He wanted. Clearly now, this man was God, and the redemption was paid, and available free of charge to the entire world, before the cross, during, and after. So, if you are a Christian, you have a God, who is so crazy over you, that he would create an entire world, and die the worst death, just to love you and to be loved by you. This God will destroy your religion, and rob you of your fear in order to love you, and to be loved by you. That is if you'll let Him, He loves you enough to give you free will, freedom to reject Him, to fear Him instead, to worship something or someone else instead. So what is a man or a woman to do with a God who loves him/her this much? It's up to you to answer this question.

 There are many specific examples of how God looks after His own. For example, once, a long time ago, the Lord looked at the world he had created and saw that it was a total wreck. It needed a deep clean. However, he told one of his that he was going to do this. He gave him instructions on how to float above it all. Noah was the man’s name, and he followed those instructions. The Lord gave him strength to do the work. Did the Lord know that after saving Noah’s life, he would get drunk and be indecent? Did he know that his descendants would try to build a tower to him and that he would have to create language barriers to stop it? Of course, but the Lord preserved Noah and his family, because Noah and his family were his.