What is the difference between resignation and surrender? This question recently arose while talking with someone about an extended season of unanswered prayer in a significant area of their life. Both words have the idea of giving up, but especially in spiritual circles, resignation has a negative connotation while surrender has a more positive connotation. What is a difference that accounts for this?

With resignation, we are giving up on receiving what we are asking for. We are resigning ourselves to living without it because we believe it is not going to happen in our life here in this age. Resignation is a way to deal with the pain of desiring, hoping and asking only to be disappointed again and again and again. The more desirable and important to us it is, the deeper the pain of disappointment when we do not receive. And each time that happens, it feels like God is not loving because He is withholding this good thing. With resignation, we will eventually stop praying.

Resignation can reduce the pain of disappointment and the struggle of feeling unloved by God. But, if we have no sense of how God is with us in the denial of our prayers, we are functioning as an atheist. We stop praying because in this area of our lives, it is as if God does not exist. So while resignation is giving up on a desire, it does have a negative impact on our relationship with God.

Surrender can be understood as giving up that allows us to continue to desire and to continue in prayer. What we need to surrender is the idea that God must grant our request in order for us to see Him as good and loving. The practice of this surrender would be to continually express our unfulfilled desire to God, pouring out our hearts to Him with the firm conviction that He hears and cares about our desire. We then conclude that prayer with a surrender that is akin to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42).

This surrender is an expression of both trust and devotion to God. We trust Him even though we are not able to see His love and goodness in that circumstance in our lives. We are devoted to Him and His purposes for our lives even though those purposes do not match our desires. So while resignation has a negative impact on our relationship with God, surrender is deeply relational. And if we think about it from God’s perspective, this is a much deeper expression of love and devotion than our expression of thanksgiving if He had granted our request.

Surrender does not give up on the desire (unless God gives us a different perspective on that desire so that we are now able to see His goodness in not granting it.) The continual expression of the desire in prayer provides for fresh opportunities to surrender as an expression of trust and devotion. We are able to be in touch with our desire and share that with God who cares about what we are feeling and going through. When we shift from expressing the desire to surrender, we shift our focus from the unfulfilled desire to the reasons that we have to trust God and why we want to be devoted to Him. This combination of desire and surrender strikes me as both emotionally and spiritually healthy.

So while resignation will cause us to stop praying, surrender is something that we do every time that we pray for that desire because it is part of our expression in prayer.

It is in the context of deep longings in people’s lives that I have had these thoughts. But it can apply to longings that you have for your work life, perhaps in career aspirations or a work project that feels particularly significant or meaningful for you. Does this blog raise any questions for you on how this could apply to your life? If so, I would love to hear them.

I would love to connect with you about these posts if they have stirred any thoughts or questions. Take a minute, shoot me an email at bo@leavenedlives.org, and let’s see where that takes us.