Gideon's Trumpet
The Discipline of Surrender by Douglas Webster: Chapter 5


I love Webster's opening remark: God's strategy for success is different from ours. Ain't that the truth.

Who would have thought that the whittling down of the army would be a strategy for success? I mean, I was always taught that the one with the most toys wins, the country with the biggest guns won, the pastor with the biggest pasture got the biggest crown, the most expensive thing on the menu was the best tasting thing in the restaurant. Who knew? I guess God's strategy of the Cross runs "cross cultural", so to speak. 

God's strategy for success flies in the face of the "bigger is better" mentality. Why is that?

And with regard to surrender... 

Two things have emerged in my thinking when reading about Gideon. The first is that merely having the attitude, awareness, or even capability of surrender doesn't cut it. For surrender to be truly surrender it must be co-linked sacrificially with the DNA of surrendered Christ. I may be wonderful at surrendering to wrongful things. I may even be wonderful to surrendering to good things. But we are called to surrender to Godly things in Christ Jesus our Lord. Big difference. It is that type of surrender - a whole-hearted surrender to the plans and purposes of God - that link us directly with the heart of Jesus. When we are in that mode we have something so common with the Life of Christ - something so core to his very Life - that one could say that we have become One with him, synced completely with his sacrificial, surrendered Nature. For our God is a Man of surrender.

Another thing that strikes me is this: Surrender as a lifestyle. Surrender is not merely something we do after God places a mark on our life, a wonderful victory, or incarnational intrusion on our otherwise mundane existence. If Gideon had only surrendered at the Lord's victory in the trumpet blast that would have been a no brainer. Who could not help but to give into God at such a obvious God sighting! No, the beauty of Gideon's surrender is that it began long before his victory over the Midianites. His "surrender button" was working long before the chaotic blast of the trumpet. He surrendered to God's call in the fleece. He surrendered to God's logic in the whittling down of the troops. He surrendered here. He surrendered there. Perhaps, at the end of his life - as might be our boast as well - he may have reflected, what part of his life WASN'T laced with surrender to the strategy of the cross? 

Surrender is the name of the Game. This type of surrender goes far beyond the "grin-and-bare-it" resignation of particular events to God, where one might look up to the sky and flippantly say, "OK God, you win." The problem is, these things add up. And after a while it turns into an endurance test. This time I surrender, another time I surrender, and ANOTHER time? REALLY?!  Another time?!! Alright. I surrender here, too. That type of surrender has neither purpose or spiritual formation in its release. That type of surrender will only breed anger and bitterness, as it continually increases - event after event - through the years. Like the perpetual nagging of a spouse, or the slow-dripping drops of water torture, it will eventually make you crack. At the end of the day, God always wins. And you? You'll only turn into a sore looser.

My experience is that God's call to us is to be co-yoked with him in a LIFESTYLE of surrender. Up and against the surrender that runs from event to event, this is one continuous surrender which is more akin to a constant flow, a blurring of events - streaming over the particulars much like a crystal river flows gracefully around rocks and turns in the stream - where the particular events demanding particular surrenders become unidentifiable, without beginning or end, enmeshed and without definition underneath the grace-filled rapids of the Holy Spirit. It is when thewhole of our life becomes a single event called "surrender' that we can say we are co-yoked with Christ and walking in the Spirit of humility. How does that happen? How do we get to that point, if indeed it is a place we need to be at?  You tell me.