Raised and Amplified
“Surrendering to God doesn’t repress your personality, it enhances it.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
Enhancing something means raising it and amplifying it. It means improving it in value, quality, and attractiveness.
That’s what God does with our personalities, the uniqueness he gave each of us, when we make Jesus Lord. For this enhancement to be fully active in our lives, we must realize what surrender means and why it’s important.
Surrender
Surrender to God means giving up control of our lives to him. It means seeking to know and do his will.
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
It also means we trust him to do what is best for us.
“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” (Jeremiah 29:11)
God desires unity, not uniformity. He wants each of us to operate in the unique combination of gifts and abilities he’s given us. In our uniqueness, then, unity and success of the body as a whole happens.
“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body – whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.” (1 Corinthians 12:12-14)
