Surrender (spirituality and psychology)

To surrender in spirituality and religion means that a believer completely gives up his own will and subjects his thoughts, ideas, and deeds to the will and teachings of a higher power. It may also be contrasted with Submission. Surrender is willful acceptance and yielding to a dominating force and their will.

In Christianity, the first main principle of surrender is "Dying to Self", or the "emptying of self" to allow Christ to live through the believer, illustrated in the following passages:

If any [man] come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

For to me to live [is] Christ, and to die [is] gain.

For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.

The second issue of surrender in Christianity is allowing Christ to "take our place" through the believer, in other words, the emptying of self so that God may live through the believer as evidenced in Phl 1:21.

Another principle central to the Christian concept of surrender is the concept of surrender to God's Will. Surrendering to God's will entails both the "surrender of our will to His in macrocosm", in which His plan prevails over man's and the adversary, and secondarily to the surrender of one's will for individual life to "His will for our personal lives in microcosm." This is done through the emptying or dying of self, the "putting self aside" in favor of divine influence. This includes the idea of surrendering to a call. The corollary of this personal surrender is obedience, and obedience to God is denoted as bringing about His will, having lasting effects, and often associated with earthly and divine blessings.

The supreme act of surrender which the believer is called to emulate is the surrender of Christ first as coming into the world as God incarnate and then the surrender to the Cross in the act of sacrificial atonement, breaking the curse of sin and death from the Fall.

But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

Surrender is also noted in Christian doctrine as one of the three columns of victorious living, or Christian victory: the Blood of the Lamb [Christ], their Testimony of the Word of God [Scriptures] and their lives, and Loving not their lives to death.

...
Wikipedia