Don’t Fight It – Surrender.
Do you recognize that phrase? It was a line in an ad for a candy bar. The spokesperson would say, “Don’t fight it. Surrender. Have a Peter Paul Almond Cluster.” I attached the Youtube link to an ad from 1957 at the end so you can see/hear the appeal they made.
Of course we have a choice about eating a candy bar or not, but there are certain “battles” we can’t win. For instance, our almost 2 year old grandson doesn’t always want to take his nap when he needs one. Everyone knows he needs it except him. He is getting to the place where he sometimes asks to take a nap. Amazing! Truth is whether he fights it or cooperates, trying to not go to sleep is a battle he can’t win. He will go to sleep. Sleep is a part of life and is important for his health and peace in his home.
You and I are built with “eternity in our heart”.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
We can try to deny it, pretend eternity isn’t set in our hearts, or try to create our own path to the eternity we want, but that isn’t the way it works. I have been fascinated recently by some documentaries investigating the world’s most dangerous roadways. Wow, those Himalayan or Peruvian roadways are not for me! In the making of the episodes the producers encounter interesting individuals and communities of people along the way. One of their usual encounters is with the religious leaders, priests, shamans, or monks from various religions. It is amazing what people worship, how they worship, how they picture eternity, and upon what they base their hopes of eternal life.
I am not writing as their judge, because I know God loves them and wants them saved. How He will accomplish getting the Gospel message of Jesus to them is a plan far above my pay-grade to understand. I leave that to Him since I have no other real choice. Point is – they and we have eternity set in our hearts and we want to live eternally in our version of heaven or place of joy and peace. God has prepared a place and offers our entrance through Jesus Christ to His version of heaven – the real one.
You and I may fight against the plan, but it will do no good. In fact, fighting against the plan can do great harm and inflict severe pain to us and to those we influence. A real illustration came from a gentleman with whom I spoke recently. His father refused to listen to the Good News of Jesus even though that Gospel was offered and presented with love and passion. The dad even had a living example of the changed life of his son. Did it matter that the dad rejected the son’s plea to at least consider Jesus Christ as his Savior? I saw the sadness in the man’s eyes as he recounted his dad’s rejection of the Gospel. Unless the father came to faith without his son’s knowing (and that is possible), that man rejected God’s only solution to his sin.
Don’t fight Him. Surrender. Acts 4:12 is clear -“Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”