Why Monopoly and Submission Don’t Mix

In my early grade-school years, Barbies and board games were rainy-day entertainment staples. But I wasn’t fond of Monopoly.

The goal of complete control never appealed to me. Relinquishing one’s last property in total surrender was humiliating.

Surrender raises a white flag. You cease striving and put yourself wholly at the mercy of what you surrender to.

It makes me think of Daniel.

He was barely a teenager when Nebuchadnezzar’s troops started besieging Jerusalem. The ordeal lasted thirty months. Think of what Daniel saw in those 2.5 years. Archaeological evidence gives us glimpses of the atrocities:

• The Hebrews endured famine and suffering.
• Towns near Judea’s western border and small villages near Jerusalem were destroyed.
• Jerusalem was burned and razed to the ground.
• King Solomon’s Temple was plundered and destroyed.
• The king of Judah was captured.
• Many Judeans were slaughtered. Others were taken captive.

Of all the horrors Daniel witnessed, seeing the Babylonians ransack the Temple—then watching Nebuchadnezzar add its sacred items to “the treasure-house of his god”—may have wounded Daniel the most.

The cushy digs, select food, and three years of “training” Daniel and his friends got in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace were cleverly veiled indoctrination. Daniel and his friends would live only as long as they were useful to the king.

How did Daniel keep his faith?

By surrendering completely to God. In short, Daniel told God, “I’ve signed a blank check to You. You write in the amount.” Prayer became his spiritual oxygen. Holiness became his lifeblood.

That’s not an Old Testament thing. That’s a God-calls-all-of-us-to-do-that thing.

Surrendering the large and small

Ironically, the largest challenges in our lives are easier to surrender to God than the dark corners of our hearts. Johnnie Moore puts it this way: “As Christians, we don’t have a conscious fight with God, but we almost always have subconscious fights with God—holding a little back from Him, even praying a bit manipulatively, somehow trying to cajole, bargain, or negotiate with Him.”

Friends, Christianity is more about what God does in you than what God does for you.

Yes, He does both. But realizing that both require our surrender can pull us up short. Surrender to God requires humility. Not humiliation like in Monopoly, but a holy heart posture that bows before Him and says, “do what You want with me.”

The power of complete surrender

Although Daniel’s faithfulness in prayer was admirable, prayer alone didn’t keep his path straight. It was his settled decision to surrender completely to God—and take whatever he was dealt—that kept him rock-steady throughout more than seventy years of service to four Babylonian kings.

Despite his status and God-honoring faithfulness, Daniel endured difficult times. What we don’t know is their extent. A counterintuitive truth about God is the amazing victories He brings into our lives are because of the dark places.

I’ve had to learn this again this past month.

As Rees Howells said, “God doesn’t want my patronage; He wants my obedience. He doesn’t want my acknowledgment; He wants my attention.”

Sometimes surrender isn’t pretty. But it’s needed. It invites God to sweep out the dark recesses of our hearts. Are we fearful or embarrassed for Him to clean our closets? Even if He reveals more we need to surrender to Him, we’ll be better off for it.

Our surrender unleashes God’s power and multiplicative math into our lives. I won’t fully understand that this side of heaven, but I’ve seen its results. His ways truly aren’t our ways. They’re much better. Even if He deems it best for us to live in a place of “exile”—poor health, broken relationships, difficult workplace, failed dreams.

One surrendered soul at a time

This week an author friend who’s in the rocky middle of cancer treatments wrote, “I know that my role through it is to live it well and live it with God and live it with hope.”

Charles Finney, who characterized the Holy Spirit as “waves of liquid love,” is considered the father of American Revivalism. He said revival is a new beginning of a new obedience to God. That requires surrender.

God changes the world one surrendered person at a time. One man from Ur. An expat near a burning bush. Two spies scoping out Canaan. Four teenagers in Nebuchadnezzar’s court. One orphan girl in Susa. And you.

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I previously wrote a five-part series about Daniel. It starts here.

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BONUS
Read more about Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Jerusalem here.