Submit? Me?

Someone very dear to me recently told me that she believed that I needed a spirit of submission. She also went on to say that she too needed to have the same such spirit in her own life. I find that advice and direction are much more meaningful if the one giving the advice or direction confesses to needing the same thing. So I thought about it…

Wait! What?

Submission? What or who do I need to submit to? I’m a guy. Aren’t I supposed to be able to do everything that I need for myself? And I certainly do not need to hand over the reigns of my life to anyone else. Or do I?

My handy-dandy Google dictionary defines submission as “the action or fact of accepting or yielding to a superior force or to the will or authority of another person.” I suppose that sounds about right. Then below that they used the word in a sentence.

The sentence said, “The were forced into submission.”

Whoa!

How is it that I need to be forced to submit to anyone or anything? This doesn’t sound good. This can’t be what she meant can it?

Well, I took a few minutes and started to look up some of what the Bible says about submission. I figured that I could probably get pretty close to what she meant by going there. There were two passages (of more than 50) that really seemed to speak out to me about what the benefits of having a spirit of submission may be.

The first one is in the book of Job. In chapter 22 it says;
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“Submit to God and be at peace with him;
    in this way prosperity will come to you.
22
Accept instruction from his mouth
    and lay up his words in your heart.
23
If you return to the Almighty, you will be restored:
    If you remove wickedness far from your tent
24
and assign your nuggets to the dust,
    your gold of Ophir to the rocks in the ravines,
25
then the Almighty will be your gold,
    the choicest silver for you.
26
Surely then you will find delight in the Almighty
    and will lift up your face to God.
27
You will pray to him, and he will hear you,
    and you will fulfill your vows.
28
What you decide on will be done,
    and light will shine on your ways.
29
When people are brought low and you say, ‘Lift them up!’
    then he will save the downcast.
30
He will deliver even one who is not innocent,
    who will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands.” (Job 22:21-30)

Now, that makes sense to me. If I submit to God, and do what He says as well as be a believer, He will hear my prayers and if I am at peace with Him prosperity will come to me. This says to me that God takes care of those who have surrendered to Him.

Who wouldn’t want to be taken care of by the Creator of the universe?

It also says that God can handle it, no matter what “it” is. It doesn’t say anything about being forced to do it or being beaten into submission. I guess to gain the blessings, we are to submit to God but it would be our decision we wouldn’t be conscripted. However, according to this passage we’d be crazy not to.

So after reading that, I can see her point. Maybe I do need that. But I wanted to see if there was another verse that might shed some light on what my friend was suggesting.

In the book of James I think I found what I was looking for. In chapter four James talks about how if we are friends with the world then we are at odds with God. That makes complete sense to me so I kept reading. Later in the chapter James writes, “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7).

So submission is looking pretty good right about now. I guess it is very similar to the way we as parents require our children to submit to us. It is so that we can take care of them, help them to prosper and keep them from harm.

Like being beaten or forced to do something against our will. It is about realizing that we are the children of an infinite God who wishes to bless us in many ways if we come close to Him. As a matter of fact the beginning of the very next verse says just that. It says, “Come near to God and He will come near to you.” (James 4:8a)

So I guess what my friend was saying was not that I should have to be forced into submitting to a demanding tyrant of a God, but rather that by submitting as a child would to a loving parent I will find that things in my life will be much, much better.

Okay, I’m in.