The Sweet Fruit of Surrender - Treasures of Faith - Week 5 Day 7

TODAY'S TREASURE

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

Hebrews 11:20

Transcript

The Sweet Fruit of Surrender

Chuck and Sharon Betters

 Today’s Treasure

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.

Hebrews 11:20

Surrender is rarely sweet in the moment. It feels more like loss than gain—like saying goodbye to the life we wanted, the plan we imagined. But over time, surrender becomes a doorway to something deeper, more lasting: peace, clarity, and the joy of resting in God’s sovereign love.

Isaac’s story reaches its most pivotal moment in Genesis 27. Blinded physically and spiritually, he tried to manipulate the outcome of his family’s future by blessing Esau. Despite God’s clear word that Jacob was the chosen heir, Isaac leaned on tradition and preference. But when the deception was uncovered, Isaac didn’t retract the blessing. Scripture tells us he “trembled violently” (v. 33). In that moment, he realized he had been resisting God. And he yielded.

That trembling wasn’t just fear—it was the holy recognition of God’s sovereignty. Isaac finally let go of his plan and embraced God’s. The blessing to Jacob was irrevocable. Esau, though tearful, showed no repentance. But Isaac, in the face of his family’s dysfunction and his own failure, chose to trust God's bigger picture. It was costly. But it was also the beginning of peace.

Despite all of this foul play and family turmoil, God chose to commend Isaac, in Hebrews 11, for finally realizing his part in God’s plan of redemption and for acting accordingly. In the end, God graciously protected Isaac from choosing Esau to be his successor. Ultimately, faith empowered Isaac to set aside his own desires for himself and his family with faithful obedience. He blessed his sons according to the sovereign Word of God. Isaac understood the spiritual truth conveyed many years later by the prophet Isaiah:

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9

Although this family suffered severe consequences for its sin, God did not reject them but continued to carry out His covenant plans through them. Isaac, in the end, trusted God, surrendering to His will and accepting the promises of the covenant. Like his father Abraham before him and his son Jacob after him, Isaac longed for a “better country.” He, too, saw that country only from afar, but at last he entered into that country, just as God had promised (Matthew 22:32).

The writer of Hebrews commends Isaac for that moment: “By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future.” God does not praise Isaac’s deception, favoritism, or spiritual blindness. He honors the surrender. That single, obedient act—relinquishing control, aligning with God’s will—bore the fruit of faith.

God identified Isaac as His own and, in so doing, provided one more snapshot in this “faith family album” in Hebrews 11—an album filled with pictures of people who knew God’s character and came to accept His unconditional love. It is easy to sympathize with Isaac. We see ourselves in him. Like Isaac, we are often tempted to reject God’s authority and to come up with our own solutions. Going our own way often seems so much easier, so much more likely to satisfy our needs. But, as He did with Isaac, our sovereign God knows how to correct our steps, and He shows us—through the life of Isaac and through the circumstances of our own lives—that, in the long run, obedience with eternity in view really is better.

LIFE-GIVING ENCOURAGEMENT

Faith often forces hard choices on us that may not make sense, especially when God’s directions to us in His Word require the giving up of our “rights.” God, in fact, through the book of Hebrews, was asking these suffering first-century Christians to continue to do the very things that brought them pain: to grow in intimacy with Christ, to believe His promises, to identify themselves as members of the covenant community, and to keep on ministering to one another (Hebrews 10:19-25). Isaac’s recognition of the supremacy and power of God’s sovereign will reminded these first-century believers that their obedience, costly as it was, boldly proclaimed to a watching world that they, too, trusted God. God commended Isaac—the critical human link that would pass His promises on to Jacob—and thereby reminded the Hebrew Christians that they, too, were critical links in the family of God. They, like us, simply needed to persevere—relating the truth of God to the next generation of believers, whatever the cost might be.

Our story of grief after losing our son Mark took us through a similar trembling. We wanted our old life back. We wanted to feel whole. But a dear friend quietly asked, “How will God use this to build up the church?” At first, we recoiled. But eventually, God softened our hearts. We asked Him to help us surrender our pain, and He met us there. Not with quick answers or easy comfort, but with Himself. With meaning. With purpose.

We still miss Mark every day. But in the surrender, God gave us something unexpected: the joy of helping others walk through the valley of suffering. That’s the sweet fruit of surrender—not ease, but impact. Not comfort, but calling. Not answers, but presence.

What about you? What do you need to surrender today? Is it a broken dream, a prodigal child, a fractured relationship, or the timing of something good? God doesn’t promise an easy road. But He promises Himself—and that is enough. In the act of surrender, we echo Isaac’s faith. We declare that God knows best, even when we don’t understand. And we trust that He will bring fruit—in His time, in His way.

PRAYER

Father, thank You for honoring even our trembling surrender. You know how hard it is to release our plans, especially when the cost is high. But You are faithful. Teach me to trust You with what I cannot see. Give me the courage to surrender again and again, believing that You will bring fruit from my obedience. May my life reflect Isaac’s legacy of faith, not because I am strong, but because You are. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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Adapted from Treasures of Faith by Chuck and Sharon Betters with permission from P&R Publishing

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