What Is Absolute Surrender? Andrew Murray's Answer in His Own Words
Absolute surrender, as Andrew Murray taught it, means giving yourself wholly into God's hands so that He can do in you everything He wants to do. Nothing is held back: not your plans, your work, your temper, your tongue or your time. Murray gave the clearest definition near the end of his book Absolute Surrender.
It means that just as literally as Christ was given up entirely to God, I am given up entirely to Christ.
Absolute Surrender, Address IX
That sounds like a heavy demand, and Murray knew it. But the heart of his teaching is good news: God asks for surrender, and God Himself makes it possible. Here is how he explains it, in his own words. You can read Absolute Surrender free to see each passage in context.
Where the phrase comes from
Murray didn't coin the phrase. He tells how he was once with Christians in Scotland talking about the state of the church, and he asked a man who trained Christian workers what the great need was. The answer stuck with him.
Absolute surrender to God is the one thing.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
The man explained that workers who were sound on this point kept growing, even if they were slow, while others often fell away. Murray took his text from a strange place: 1 Kings 20, where the king of Syria demanded everything the king of Israel had.
My lord, O king, according to thy saying, I am thine, and all that I have.
1 Kings 20:4
If Ahab could say that to an enemy, Murray asks, shouldn't a child of God say it to his loving Father?
Why God asks for all of it
Murray's first reason is the nature of God. God is the only source of life and goodness, and He can't work fully in what is only partly His. Murray points to the lily, which simply lets God clothe it, and then to the pen in his pocket.
I have a pen in my pocket, and that pen is absolutely surrendered to the one work of writing, and that pen must be absolutely surrendered to my hand if I am to write properly with it. If another holds it partly, I cannot write properly.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
God claims it, God is worthy of it, and without it God cannot work His blessed work in us.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
Later he uses a picture from the tea table. Tea is poured into a cup because the cup is empty. Put ink or vinegar in it, and no one will pour the tea. God fills what is given up to Him.
Surrender is God's work in you
This is the part of Murray's teaching people most need to hear. Many hold back because they fear what surrender will cost, or because they know their own will is weak. Murray answers that God does not ask us to produce the surrender by our own strength.
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.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
He even gives a prayer for someone whose desire feels too feeble.
Say: “My God, I am willing that Thou shouldst make me willing.”
Absolute Surrender, Address I
Be not afraid that He will command from you what He will not bestow.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
You can surrender with a trembling heart
Murray expects that when you yield yourself, you may not feel strong or certain. He points to the father in the Gospels who cried, "Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief," and whose weak faith still saw the evil spirit cast out. He points to Jesus in Gethsemane, offering Himself through the eternal Spirit in deep sorrow. Feelings are not the measure. God accepts what you bring in faith.
You may not feel it, you may not realize it, but God takes possession if you will trust Him.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
God keeps what you surrender
Many people have given themselves to God at a meeting, felt the glow fade within weeks, and concluded it didn't work. Murray says the problem is that they didn't believe God would keep it.
When God has begun the work of absolute surrender in you, and when God has accepted your surrender, then God holds Himself bound to care for it and to keep it.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
He builds out this promise in the eighth address, on being "kept by the power of God through faith." That keeping covers your whole life, prosperity and trial, great sins and small ones like a hasty temper, every moment of the day.
The two sides of a surrendered life
Murray says a life of absolute surrender has two sides.
Such a life has two sides — on the one side, absolute surrender to work what God wants you to do; on the other side, to let God work what He wants to do.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
So surrender is not passivity. You give yourself to obey God's will in everything you know of it. And you give yourself to let God work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure, which no effort of yours can produce.
What absolute surrender is not
Murray warns against a common mistake: treating God as one part of life alongside everything else.
I have my business and family duties, and my relations as a citizen, and all this I cannot change. And now alongside all this I am to take in religion and the service of God, as something that will keep me from sin.
Absolute Surrender, Address IX
He says that isn't right. A believer has been bought with the blood of Christ, and so belongs to Him entirely, in business and family life as much as in prayer.
We make our own plans and choose our own work, and then we ask the Lord Jesus to come in and take care that sin shall not conquer us too much, and that we shall not go too far wrong; we ask Him to come in and give us so much of His blessing.
Absolute Surrender, Address IX
Surrender means the end of the self-life
Across the book, the great enemy of surrender is self. In the address on Peter, Murray shows a man who had left his boats and nets for Jesus and still trusted his own judgment, sought first place and promised he would never fall.
He had left his boats and his nets, but not his old self.
Absolute Surrender, Address IV
There is no choice for us; we must either deny self or deny Christ.
Absolute Surrender, Address IV
Peter's change began when the look of Jesus broke his heart, and it was finished when the Holy Spirit filled him at Pentecost. Murray says the same Christ is waiting to take charge of every heart willing to surrender to Him. This is the same teaching he gave in his earlier book on humility: the believer is an empty vessel God fills. Our summary of Humility traces that thread, and our Andrew Murray humility quotes gather his best lines on it.
The branch and the vine
In the last address, Murray lets a vine branch preach surrender. It has nothing of its own. It is fit for nothing but to bear fruit. It simply receives.
If I am something, then God is not everything; but when I become nothing, God can become all, and the everlasting God in Christ can reveal Himself fully.
Absolute Surrender, Address IX
How to begin
Murray's counsel is simple: say it to God, then trust Him with it. He offers words to pray.
O God, I accept Thy demands. I am thine and all that I have. Absolute surrender is what my soul yields to Thee by divine grace.
Absolute Surrender, Address I
And he admits that surrender is something you grow into.
I do not understand that word surrender fully; it gets new meanings every now and then; it enlarges immensely from time to time. But I advise you to speak it out: “Absolute surrender to Thee, O Christ, is what I have chosen.”
Absolute Surrender, Address IX
If you want to go further, our summary of all nine addresses walks through the book, and you can start reading Absolute Surrender with the first address.