One of the ways salvation is sometimes described is described is surrendering your life to Christ. The act of surrendering is often associated with criminals that have been caught by the police or an army that is taken prisoner by its enemy. There is usually some element of capture involved and the loss of freedom. When I became a Christian, I didn’t really surrender my life to Christ. I surrendered a part of my life, the part that was messed up and needed fixing, but most of my life was still under my control. Over the course of about 30 years, I slowly and gradually surrendered the rest until I was completely surrendered to Christ.

Most of the vessels in Solomon’s temple were made of brass (2 Chronicles 4:18), but some were made of gold. A list of articles made of pure gold can be found in 2 Chronicles 4:20-22 and it also indicates that “the flowers, and the lamps, and the tongs, made he of gold, and that perfect gold.” The word translated perfect, miklah means completion (4357). Miklah is derived from the word kalah which means to end or be finished (3615). Kalah may refer to the end of a process or action, so the perfect gold may have been gold that was processed to remove impurities. The word translated pure, cagar means to shut up or imprison and figuratively it can mean to surrender. The likely source of this gold was an underground mine. Therefore, the reference to its purity is not about its quality, but its location.

Thinking about myself as a resource to God, I have no value unless I am where he wants to be when he wants to use me. Part of the process of my surrender was getting into a location where I would be available for service in a particular church/ministry. In some ways, my gifts and talents are now like a gold deposit ready to be mined when they are needed.