Retreat and Surrender

"No retreat, no surrender" is not always applicable.

Today, I learned that there are times when it is better to retreat and surrender. Due to strong downpour of rain last night, our village's main road became flooded this morning. I was hoping that the rain would stop and the flood would be gone. My mother told me not to go to work today because based on the information she got from our village's security personnel, the main road is not passable already for vehicles except for fire trucks and big trucks. I was quite persistent and keep on rationalizing that my car could make it through the floods. My mom suggested that maybe I could go after lunch. After a few minutes of "deliberation" and weighing my options, I decided that I would wait for the flood to subside.

A couple of hours before noon, I thought the flood is gone and decided to survey the streets. My brother accompanied me and we rode his car. The main road was still flooded. When we were approaching the "deepest" portion along the main road, we saw quite a long queue of cars hesitating to face the deep flood. Few cars already made their decisions and made U-turn. We were still taking our time weighing the situation when a fire truck appeared from a distance. The fire truck hitched people from our village's gate who wanted to go home. As the fire truck was approaching, my brother looked at me as if I'm the "captain of the ship" and asked, "what's next?" Well, seeing the situation, as much as I want us to go ahead, I ordered him to retreat.

Just a thought: As we were going back home, I remember a chapter about surrender in Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life. Thoughts about surrender flooded my mind. Most of the time we are wrestling with God for control of our lives. But there will come a time when we need to make a decision: are we going to continue to fight with Him or simply surrender? I made my decision to surrender to Him several years ago. I'm sure it was the most important decision in my life that would affect my eternity.