Radical Surrender?

In my reading this morning, I was in 2 Ki 17:41, "So while these nations feared the Lord, they also served their idols; their children and their grand children, as their fathers did, so they do to this day." The question that is bothering me is, “How can they worship the Lord and worship idols at the same time? How silly are they?” Really? Don’t we sometimes worship God and worship idols too? But our idols are not idols of brick and stones but idols of the heart. Idols like happiness, comfort, love, fame, fortune and the likes. I would like to deal with just one today – happiness. Perhaps many of you like me, feel that we have the right to happiness. Particularly as Christians, being children of the Living God, we should experience happiness in our lives. But God did not call us to happiness, but to surrender – total surrender. I was particularly touched by a story recorded in “The Sacred Echo” by Margaret Feinberg. In an interview with Steve Saint on the death of his father Nate Saint at the hands of Auca Indians, Steve said:

"I don't think God allowed my dad and his friends to be killed. I think he orchestrated it with 5 men that gave their lives to Him. bad things don't come from God but sometimes they seem bad. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Most people don't want to give God liberty to use their lives that way, because we call it tragic. Most think that it's OK to go with God's program as long as it fits their program. But I finally decided that I wanted God to write the story because I know that it will come out best in the end that way"

Then Steve drifted from the story of Waodani to his own story. The previous year, Steve & his wife had lost their daughter Stephanie to sudden cerebral hemorrhage less than nine hours after she returned from a yearlong mission trip.

"I saw her lying there, looking normal. I really believed that if I would just pray and beg the Lord to restore her, he would have. But... but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Because I have been through things that seem tragic, but God uses them for his own purposes."

Margaret replied, "Wait a minute. You mean you sat at your dying daughter's bedside with the full faith that God would heal your daughter if you prayed, but still you desired God's will over your own?"

"Yes."

"Does the loss of your daughter still hurt?"

"My heart has a huge hole blown i nit and even grandbabies don't fill the hole - they just help heal around the edges." Then Steve quoted Jim Elliot, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot loss."

This is surrender. Margaret Feinberg said, "I still can't wrap my head around it, but on that day with Steve, I felt like for the first time I was beginning to wrap my heart around it. I don't know if God intended to heal Steve's daughter and I'm not convinced his decision not to pray was the best response. Yet, it powerfully illustrates the nature of surrender. True surrender is not something that happens to you, it is something you willingly do. It is not a single action, but a posture in life, yielding ourselves to God.”

Is this radical surrender? Or just a normal Christian life expected by followers of a radical God? Sometimes I wonder, what are the idols of our hearts? Do we worship God and continue to worship the idols of our lives?