Friday - Ecclesiastes 10 - The Power of Surrender

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HE tail end of Ecclesiastes 10:4 reads like this, "...yielding pacifies great offences."  That seems obvious enough, eh?  Yet, how many of us struggle with that?  Many of us choose rather to excuse, justify, defy, deny or worse, to continue in offences instead of surrendering.  The power of surrender is, in reality, simply the power of humility.  And, if we are willing to peel back the skin and look a little deeper, we will see the real reason behind this phenomenon: "God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble (James 4:6).  This is the key that opens the treasure chest of God's grace?  And, it seems reasonable that surrender should the outgrowth of the combination of guilt and humility.

The strange thing that happens when we yield humbly to the pressure of correction is that we suddenly find ourselves rising victoriously.  We are able to experience a peace and prosperity by yielding, a peace which we could never achieve through rigid resistance and stubborn self-defense.  So essentially, we are wise to meekly admit our guilt when we are in the wrong, but we are foolish to attempt any method of avoidance.

Ecclesiastes 10:12-14 speaks sharply against the babbling of a fool.  Let us not dig our own grave deeper by rambling on and on with excuses, especially when what we need to say is simply that we were wrong and that we are sorry.  And, of course our apologies must be sincere, or we might as well not make them, because we will be right back in the same guilty position in short order.  Humility is first and foremost an inside disposition.  If we yield to authority outwardly and at the same time curse authority in our mind, we will eventually be found out, and a higher price will be paid than would have originally been exacted (if we had yielded genuinely in the first place – see Ecclesiastes 10:20).  We don't have to wait until our life is over to deal with our infractions or to have them dealt with.  We can get our guilt behind us in the here and now, if we are simply willing to do it (1^st Corinthians 11:31).