What surrender means

Pastor Damon Covalt began a series on surrender with Genesis 12:1-9 and Hebrews 11:8, taking as the first theme surrendering your plans. He opened with a picture of a general who says "I surrender" and then strolls past the enemy soldiers and lies down in one of their tents as if it were his own. Surrender means relinquishing all control. You do not get to say "I surrender, but this is still mine." He was not talking only about surrendering to God for salvation, he said, but about surrendering your life to God, what people often call "let go and let God." The series would work through what that really means.

Planning is not the problem

Pastor Covalt said planning itself is not wrong. Luke 14:28 says to count the cost before building a tower, and his father used to say that if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. The problem comes when our plans become non-negotiable. We pray, "Lord, take over my life," and what we often mean is "as long as it is near home and in my comfort zone." He compared it to setting a GPS for Disneyland and then ignoring every turn, saying it is close enough. What is the point of asking for directions if we will not follow them? The Apollo missions would have missed their mark by thousands of miles if they had been off course by even a tiny fraction, and Satan often convinces us something is acceptable because it is not completely against what God said. He also pointed to the trust we put in whoever packed a puzzle box: we do not count all 500 pieces before we start. How much more should we trust the Creator, who already has the picture of our lives in mind?

Abram went out, not knowing where

In Genesis 12:1 God tells Abram to leave his country, his kindred, and his father's house "unto a land that I will show thee." God gave no address and no directions beyond that. Hebrews 11:8 says Abraham "went out, not knowing whither he went." Pastor Covalt said we want to know where we are going, how far, and how long it will take, but Abraham had only God's word, and that was enough. "How much farther would we be able to go," he asked, "if that was enough for us?" He then gave three points.

Point one: Let go of your comfort

Comfort is comfortable. We gravitate to the familiar: the same seat at church, the same dish at the same restaurant. He cited the old proverb "better the devil you know than the devil you don't," and said we sometimes treat God that way. We pray to be taken out of a situation, and when He points to the light at the end of the tunnel we stay put because we do not know what is there, and so we never see the blessing He prepared. Do not mistake familiarity for God's will, he said.

"This feels right" does not mean it is God's will. Pastor Covalt said the peace of Philippians 4:7 is often misused. People say "I just feel peace about it" to confirm a decision they have already made. How often does God give peace about something easy? Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Moses going back to Egypt, Jonah going to Nineveh, and Peter stepping out of the boat could all have used some peace, and what they had was a command. Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful, and it is arrogant to claim we know what is best for ourselves when the One who formed us in the womb knows us better.

Being comfortable is not a test, but obedience is. Imagine a child who was told to clean the house and simply went and did it, with no questions about how much or how long. That is what God is looking for. Peter heard one word, "Come," and stepped out of the boat into a storm (Matthew 14:28-29). In a human mind the boat was safer, but the safest place was right next to his God.

Surrender requires movement. Verse 4 says, "So Abram departed." There was no six-month prayer meeting to decide whether it was a good idea. Our obedience has to move from intention to action, he said. Often we already know what God wants: to give something up, forgive someone, share the gospel, or change something in our lives. But knowing is not surrendering. Surrender is shown by being willing to obey.

Point two: Let go of overthinking

God does not always promise explanations; He asks for obedience. Pastor Covalt imagined a friend announcing he was moving but could not say where, how far, or for how long. To everyone else it would sound crazy, but for those who know the Creator there is no safer place. If God laid everything out in advance, it would require no faith.

Be content following one step at a time. Psalm 119:105 calls God's word "a lamp unto my feet," and a lamp lights only the next few feet. God does not show us the next ten years in advance. Driving through thick fog, we do not speed up and we do not just stop in the road and wait. We slow down, watch what is directly ahead, and keep moving until it clears.

Place the planning in the hands of the ultimate planner. We give a rideshare driver the destination and let them drive. We do not refuse to take our seat on a plane until the pilot explains every turn. How much more should we trust God? Faith is not confidence that we know where we are going, he said, but confidence that God knows. Proverbs 3:5-6 does not say we will understand afterward. It says, "he shall direct thy paths."

Point three: Let go of your timing

Abraham was seventy-five when God said, "I will make of thee a great nation" (Genesis 12:2), and he was a hundred when Isaac was born.

God knows where to go and how long to stay. We sometimes quietly add a deadline: "I will give it three months, and if I do not get the raise, it was not Your will." Pastor Covalt recalled a preacher who once told him, in a hard season for his family, that he would pray for him for thirty days, and how a number like that puts a limit on things. If God determines the destination, should He not also determine the duration? Joseph was given dreams of his family bowing to him, and then was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, thrown into prison, and forgotten by the butler for two more years. Things kept getting worse, and the text never says he lost faith in what God had promised.

God does not need your help getting started. In Genesis 16, after years of waiting, Abraham and Sarah decided they needed to make God's promise happen. We have been let down so often by people, he said, that we put God in the same category, like an employee who calls off work at the last minute. But He has never failed us. There is a difference between working while trusting God and trying to manufacture what He has promised. When a package is out for delivery, we do not drive around town hunting for the truck.

God's delay does not mean God has denied it. Genesis 21:2 says Sarah bore a son "at the set time of which God had spoken to him." Isaac was not late. Faithfulness cannot be measured only by how quickly we see results, and sometimes God asks us to keep obeying when nothing appears to be happening. A church may not see its numbers grow for a long time, he said, and still be growing in other ways. True faith shines when you do not know if it is working, but you know He is.

Written in pencil

Pastor Covalt closed with a recap. Maybe God wants to move you beyond what you have always known, so let go of your comfort. Maybe you do not need the next ten steps, only the one He has already shown you, so let go of your overthinking. Maybe God has not said no and the answer is just not yet, so let go of your timing. He asked what plan people are holding so tightly that God is not allowed to change it: a career, family, finances, the future. There is nothing wrong with having a plan, but there is something wrong when that plan matters more to us than God's will. Abraham did not know where he was going, but he knew who he was following. Surrender does not mean we stop planning, he said. It means every plan we make is written in pencil, because God is still holding the pen.