Tried That. Didn't Work. Got Anything Else?

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.​

The Bible is really clear about the necessity of walking with God in humility and submission, consciously giving God control of oneself at every turn. There simply isn't any other way to enjoy fellowship with God. He's GOD: infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, perfect in holiness and wisdom, the Ground of all Reality and Truth. God only interacts with us as He is, which means we are always the inferior in our relationship to Him, the one being led, the one yielding and submitting, the one obeying and serving. God only ever leads us.

Why do I point this out? Well, lately I've been talking with some Christian guys about the crucified life, the life of surrender to which God calls all of His children. When I've explained to them the enormous benefits of each day being a "living sacrifice" to God (Romans 12:1), the victory over sin this life produces, the growing love and intimacy with God that results from always being under His control, yielded to His will and way, the response of these fellows has been, "I already tried that. It didn't work."

Implicit in this response is, of course, the thinking that, since it didn't "work" (aka "meet my expectations") to live in surrender to God, doing so may be abandoned. If a yielded life doesn't "work," why would should one bother with it? But this makes a huge mistake: Surrender to God is optional. It's absolutely not - not if one wants to walk in joyful, fruitful, transformative fellowship with God. We don't have the option to walk with God apart from constant submission to His will and way; whether we think doing so works in the way we expect it to or not, walking humbly with God is a non-negotiable of the Christian life.

I was astonished, then, when these Christian guys essentially admitted to living lives persistently outside of God's control. They didn't realize, of course, to what they were admitting. When we are saved but not submitted, we may be God's child, adopted by Him into His family, but we cannot be in fellowship with Him. Intimate communion with God rests upon, springs out of, our being constantly, consciously yielded to Him. When we are saved but not submitted, we are living in disobedience to God who has commanded us repeatedly in His word to die to ourselves, to live under His will and way, to be "living sacrifices" for His use. When we are saved but not submitted, we cannot experience the transformative work of the Holy Spirit within us. God never forces us to change but in every step we take with Him, waits upon our conscious agreement, our surrender, to Him. When we are saved but not submitted, we must substitute our effort for God's. Because God's filling of us with Himself and all the amazing things that He is rests upon our submission to Him, when we are not submitted, we have only our own human resources from which to attempt to produce a Christ-like life. The best we can do, though, is to manufacture short-lived, superficial change that doesn't ever take us deeper into knowledge and experience of God, but only of ourselves and our profound weakness. And so on.

As I probed into what these Christian guys meant by "didn't work," it came to light that they had certain expectations of the results of their submission to God that didn't occur. Here are a couple:

When I submit,

God's control of me will be immediate and total. He will overcome instantly all my desires, habits, and ignorance and move me irresistibly into His will and way.

God's taking such radical control of me will be unmistakable.

This thinking assumes God's control is that of a sort of Divine Puppeteer. What these guys meant when they said to God, "I submit myself to your will and way," was actually, "God force me into the life you want me to live." But we can't love God - which is His First and Great Commandment to us (Matthew 22:36-38) - under such a circumstance. Love can't be compelled. Since we express our love for God in obedience to Him, in a life lived to His glory, for Him to move us puppet-like into such a life would violate the love-relationship with Him that we have and that He has made paramount in our walk with Him.

God, then, won't answer a prayer of submission to Him with coercion. Instead, God's control is always in tandem with my constant agreement to it. As result, the moment after I've surrendered to God in the heat of spiritual battle against some sinful practice I've formed, the desire to follow that sinful habit may rise again. If I'm to move from this new instant of temptation further into God's will and way, I must submit to Him again, by faith trusting Him to move me by His power into freedom - whether I can discern Him doing so or not. This act of submission may be repeated several times in rapid succession - as often as the desire to follow my sinful way rather than God's confronts me. But it is in the midst of my persistent submission to Him that God is free to alter me, conforming me to His will and way.

Many Christians I've met, struggling with sin, want God simply to eradicate in an instant every vestige of sinful desire that is in them. God has the power to do so, right? And surely God wants them living sin-free. They want this, too, so God should just zap them and totally change them forever, permanently freeing them from all inclination to sin.

What they really want, though, is freedom from sin without fellowship with God; they want liberty from guilt; relief, perhaps, from fear, from the bother of constantly focusing on God, from the humiliation of their own sinful weakness, not a deeper knowledge and experience of God. The path of least resistance is the human default; humans take the easiest course whenever possible. Choosing God again and again, then, submitting to Him over and over in everything? Why won't God just make me so I don't ever want anything but what He wants right away? That would be a lot easier, wouldn't it? See above.

What's your expectation of what it is to walk humbly with God, to live under His control? Are you praying for freedom but not fellowship, for compulsion rather than cooperation? I hope and pray not.

P.S.

I should explain that the work of a believer isn't to submit to God and then rush forward in a moment of temptation to suppress their own carnal desires, to corral their sinful habits, to fight against themselves. My "work" as a believer is to remain submitted, not strive to be godly by my own efforts. God will move me by His own power in His direction so long as I continue to yield myself to Him. Only His power is sufficient to transform me, after all. I cannot remediate myself. (Romans 7:15-24; Philippians 2:13; Ephesians 3:16; 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, etc.)

What I find as I live in submission to God is that I am moved along by God from a crossroads of choice/temptation so subtly and profoundly that I often don't realize its happened. I sometimes find myself these days worried and anxious about the future, fearful and stressed-out, and when I realize this is the case and recognize in my fear that God is not in control, that such fear manifests me, not God, I submit to Him again. I don't try to push down the fear, or argue myself into a better frame of mind, or distract myself. I just yield myself to God's will and way and continue to pray this way 'til He assuages my fear. What usually happens, though, is, an hour later, free of fear the entire time, do I realize He's changed me. This is my experience again and again as I live in submission to God. Not a wrenching, strenuous battle with myself, exhausting and stumbling, but the imperceptible, natural growth of a tree branch, expanding and bearing fruit, not by its own efforts, but by the life-giving sap of the Tree. (John 15:4-5)

P.P.S.

"i dont understand. I can sit on my sofa, pray to God, and say, Lord, you’re the driver, im the passenger, take me wherever you want. And yet, nothing happens. I dont know how to fully submit to Him, i suppose. How is this done exactly??"

What do you think is supposed to happen? God nowhere in His word obliges Himself to do something overt, something you can feel or see, in response to your prayer of submission. Instead, His response, typically, will be to move you in His direction, but with the subtlety and naturalness of the growth of a branch out from the trunk of a tree. Progressively, as you persist in submitting to God whenever you arrive at a crossroads of choice between your way and His, you will find yourself thinking and behaving in accord with God's will. There won't be any fireworks, no obvious transformation of you in a single instant; just the gradual, profound change of your desires, thinking and conduct that God has promised to you in His word.

Because the change God is working in you as you live in submission to Him each day is usually quite imperceptible, without the usual horrible contortions we go through whenever we try to change ourselves by our own power for God, we must, by faith, trust He is at work as He has promised to be. This is, in part, why Paul wrote we "walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) God is so powerful that He can change us while we remain unaware that He is. Often only in looking back do we see that He has kept His promise to transform us.

Anyway, one submits to God:

1. Consciously.
2. Persistently.
3. Frequently.

Myself, I simply say to God, "I submit to you. I yield to your will and way in this moment. Do as you will with me." Or some variation of this statement. Sometimes, when I am tempted strongly, I must confirm my submission to God repeatedly, as often as the impulse to go my own way arises. At one point, I caught myself saying to God, "Control me. Make me who you want me to be. Change my thinking and behaviour." Immediately, I was struck by how bossy I was being with God. I was telling God what to do! Yikes. It was a lot easier to do this, though, than to say, "I submit to your will and way." Interesting, that. Anyway, submitting to God is simple, but often complicated by faulty expectations of what will happen when we do submit - as I explained in my OP.

P.P.P.S.

"So what you’re saying is, whenever i come into a situation where i want to sin, say look at a porn website, instead of just doing it because i want to, i should fight that urge, and tell God, hey, im submitting to you, guide me elsewhere as you see fit."

You should fight a sinful urge by submitting to God. That's the battle, really: submitting and staying submitted in the face of fierce temptation. We are the problem, you see. And you can't fix a problem with the problem itself. We are weak, sin-prone, short-sighted, and ignorant, so we are extremely ill-equipped to fight ourselves successfully. In light of this, God offers to us Himself as our agent of change, as the Power that transforms us. Only as we submit to Him, though, does He act as such in our lives.

Philippians 1:6
Philippians 2:13
1Thessalonians 5:23-24
Ephesians 3:16
Romans 8:13
Romans 6:13