Prayer of Total Surrender

The prayer of total surrender is grounded in what Paul calls the "reasonable service" of the redeemed — the offering of the entire self to God as an act of worship. In Romans 12:1, Paul writes: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service." The word "present" (parastesai) is the same term used for the offering of a sacrifice at the altar — but here the sacrifice is the person themselves, offered not in death but in life. It is the consecration of the whole self — body, mind, habits, ambitions, time, and future — to God. The supreme model for total surrender is Jesus Christ Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke 22:42 records the words He prayed before His arrest: "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." In this prayer, Jesus acknowledged the full weight of what He was being asked to endure, did not suppress or deny the desire to be delivered from it, and yet offered His will entirely to the Father. Theologians across every tradition have identified this moment as the decisive spiritual act that prepared Jesus for His passion. The prayer "Not my will, but thine" became the template for all subsequent surrender prayer in the Christian tradition. Proverbs 3:5-6 provides the wisdom tradition's version of the same act: "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." The phrase "with all thine heart" indicates totality — not partial reliance on God supplemented by self-management, but wholehearted dependence. The promise that follows — "he shall direct thy paths" — is conditional upon this surrender. It is a promise of divine guidance that is only available to those who have let go of the need to direct themselves. Galatians 2:20 provides perhaps the most theologically dense expression of what total surrender means for the believer's identity: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Paul's statement compresses an entire theology of surrender into a single sentence. The old self — the self organized around its own desires, self-sufficiency, and self-protection — has been put to death in union with Christ's death. The new self lives, but its life is no longer self-generated; it is lived "by the faith of the Son of God." Surrender, in Pauline theology, is not the extinction of the self but its transformation through union with Christ. The Christian mystical tradition made surrender, or abandonment to God, one of its central themes. In the medieval West, the concept of Gelassenheit — a German term meaning "yieldedness" or "releasedness" — described the posture of the soul that has ceased to resist God's working and has let go of the attachments that obstruct divine union. Meister Eckhart, John Tauler, and the anonymous author of the Theologia Germanica all developed this theme extensively. The seventeenth century saw the flowering of surrender theology in the writings of Brother Lawrence, whose Practice of the Presence of God describes a life continuously offered to God through the smallest acts. At the same period, François Fénelon and Madame Guyon developed the quietist tradition of pure love — loving God with no admixture of self-interest — which, despite its controversial aspects, permanently enriched Christian spirituality's vocabulary for surrender. Jean-Pierre de Caussade's Abandonment to Divine Providence, written in the eighteenth century, became one of the most widely read works on surrender in the Catholic tradition, presenting every moment of ordinary life as the sacrament of the present moment in which God's will could be received and embraced. In the evangelical and Wesleyan traditions, surrender took the form of the crisis experience of entire consecration or full surrender, often associated with holiness movements of the nineteenth century. Francis Ridley Havergal's hymn "Take My Life and Let It Be" (1874) is perhaps the most beloved expression of total surrender in the evangelical tradition. The Keswick Convention, founded in 1875, made the surrender of the will to Christ the central theme of its annual gatherings, and the language of surrender pervaded the devotional literature of the late Victorian and Edwardian church. In the twentieth century, Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest (1927) popularized the theology of absolute surrender for millions of readers, drawing on the tradition of self-abandonment to God while translating it into accessible devotional prose. Jim Elliot's famous journal entry — "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose" — became the iconic expression of surrender in the modern missionary tradition. The prayer of total surrender has always been understood not as a single dramatic moment but as a pattern of daily return. The life surrendered to God is not a life from which struggle, doubt, or the reassertion of self-will have been permanently banished. It is a life in which the return to surrender — the daily renewal of the offering — becomes the defining rhythm of existence.

The prayer of total surrender is not to be entered lightly or prayed as a formula. It is a prayer of genuine transaction between the soul and God, and it calls for unhurried time, honesty, and a willingness to mean what one says. Begin with Romans 12:1. Read the verse slowly and ask yourself what it would mean to present your body — your physical self, your health, your sexuality, your mortality — as a living sacrifice. Then ask what it would mean to present your mind, your plans, your hopes, your fears. Many find it helpful to name specific things that are being surrendered: a particular ambition, a relationship, a fear of the future, a cherished plan that may conflict with God's purposes. Pray the words of Gethsemane: "Not my will, but thine be done." Let these words be honest. Do not rush past them. Jesus did not rush past them. Acknowledge what your will wants, and then, in full awareness of that desire, release it to the Father. Pray Galatians 2:20 in the first person, slowly, as a declaration. "I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." This is not merely a theological assertion but a prayer of identity — an alignment of who you understand yourself to be with what the gospel says is true of you in Christ. Expect resistance. The self does not yield without struggle. Thomas a Kempis observed that we say "Thy will be done" easily in words but fight against it as soon as it requires something we do not wish to give. When you feel that resistance, name it honestly before God and surrender the resistance itself. Return to this prayer regularly — daily, if possible. The great teachers of surrender in every tradition agree that it is not a single event but a continuous practice. Brother Lawrence spoke of "renewing the offering" moment by moment throughout the day. Make the prayer of surrender the first act of the morning and the last before sleep.