The Willing Is His

“for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” - Philippians 2:13 NIV

We often find ourselves approaching surrender the way we approach most things, as an achievement to reach. As if the goal is to want it badly enough, feel it deeply enough, hold it purely enough. And when the wanting feels thin or the yielding incomplete, we assume the problem is effort. We haven't tried hard enough yet.

In his classic book Absolute Surrender, Andrew Murray put it plainly, "God does not ask you to give the perfect surrender in your strength, or by the power of your will; God is willing to work it in you." The ones who had truly let go weren't the most determined. They were the most emptied, not empty of desire, but empty of the illusion that the desire originated with them.

There's a reason Philippians 2:13 stops us. Not just the acting, but the willing too. Even before we reach for him, he has already been working the wanting in us. The surrender we thought we were generating? Maybe it was always something we were receiving.

In the Bible's book of Isaiah, we find construction already underway. "Every valley must be elevated, and every mountain and hill leveled" (Isaiah 40:4 NET). The road being built through terrain we couldn't move. The workers don't level the mountains. The mountains get leveled. What we're invited to do is clear a way, receive what's being prepared, make room for what's coming through.

Scripture's letter to the Hebrews brings this to its completion in Christ. For years, priests offered the same sacrifice over and over, and it never quite finished. Then Jesus stepped in as a priest unlike any other. He "did this in offering himself once for all" (Hebrews 7:27 NET), and the repetition stopped. What couldn't be completed by trying again and again, he completed entirely. The surrender we keep straining toward? He already carried it to its finish. We were never meant to keep bringing our daily offering of surrender. That role is filled.

And what settles in us when we stop straining is exactly what Jesus promised, "My peace I give to you" (John 14:27 NET). Not peace we earned by finally surrendering correctly. Peace that arrives when we realize the work was never ours. That peace and that willing both come from the same place. It is God who works it in us.

What if effort was never the door, and the real barrier is simply assuming we have to find it ourselves? When that belief loosens, when we find ourselves wanting to open our hands and realize even that wanting came from somewhere beyond us, something shifts. Not because we finally worked it out. Because we stopped trying to.

Absolute surrender was always his to work in us. What we were reaching for already had us. That's the gift.

Prayer

Father, we've been trying to generate what you were already working in us. Free us from the effort to manufacture surrender. Work in us to will and to act, and let us recognize your hand in the wanting itself. Amen.