Surrender Before & After Success

As a pastor, I’ve had the opportunity to sit with a lot of other pastors over the years. And there is a prayer I’ve heard over and over again. Honestly, it’s a prayer I’ve prayed myself:

“God, would You fill the seats?”

Not just for the sake of having a bigger church, but because every seat represents a person. We desperately want to see people come to know Jesus. We want to see people find and follow Him. We want to see marriages restored, families changed, people baptized, and lives transformed.

And when the seats aren’t filled, it can be incredibly frustrating. You pray harder. You work harder. You strategize. You ask God to move. You tell Him, “God, if You would just bring the people, we’ll do everything we can to steward it well.”

It’s a great prayer.

But I’ve also watched something happen to pastors—and if I’m being vulnerable, I’ve seen it happen in my own heart too. Sometimes God actually answers the prayer.

The seats start filling. People start coming. The church starts growing. And somewhere along the way, it becomes really easy to forget the prayers you prayed when the seats were empty. Without ever saying it out loud, you can start believing, Maybe I’m pretty good at this. Maybe it was my leadership. Maybe it was my preaching. Maybe it was our strategy that filled those seats.

We start taking credit for something we once begged God to do.

And that’s the danger of success: sometimes we have an easier time surrendering something to God when we don’t have it than remembering it belongs to Him once we do.

The truth is, if God gave it, it was always His in the first place.

That’s what makes the story of Hannah so challenging to me. She desperately prayed for something she didn’t have. God gave it to her. And when He did, she never forgot Who it belonged to. There is something about Hannah’s heart—and her follow-through—that I think leaders and pastors alike could learn from.

It begins with learning to SURRENDER BEFORE SUCCESS.

Hannah’s story begins in 1 Samuel 1 with something she desperately wanted but didn’t have: a child. In her pain, she prayed, “O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, if you will look upon my sorrow and answer my prayer and give me a son, then I will give him back to you” (1 Samuel 1:11).

Before Hannah ever held Samuel in her arms, she had already released him in her heart.

I think there is something here for those of us who lead. It’s easy to surrender a ministry before it becomes successful. When the seats are empty, we know we need God. When the budget is tight, we know we need God. When we’re trying everything we know to do and nothing seems to be working, we know we need God.

So we pray desperate prayers: God, if You grow this, it’s Yours. If You give us influence, we’ll use it for You. If You bring people, we’ll steward them well.

Those are good prayers. But Hannah reminds me that the posture I want to have after God answers the prayer needs to be established before He answers it. Before the growth, surrender it. Before the opportunity, surrender it. Before the platform, surrender it. If God eventually puts something in our hands, our hearts should have already decided whose it is.

And in Hannah’s case, God answered her prayer. Samuel was born.

Years later, Hannah stood before Eli and said, “I asked the Lord to give me this boy, and he has granted my request” (1 Samuel 1:27). I love that sentence because Hannah clearly knew where the blessing came from. She didn’t say, Look what I accomplished. She said, essentially, Look what God did.

But she also remembered what she had promised when she had nothing. She clearly had a COMMITMENT TO HER VOW, something I think we as pastors and leaders could probably do a little better if we’re really honest.

That’s where this gets uncomfortable for me as a pastor. How many prayers have we prayed in seasons of desperation that became easy to forget in seasons of success?

We pray, God, if You fill these seats, we’ll make it about people finding Jesus. Then the seats fill, and suddenly we’re worried about protecting attendance. We pray, God, if You give me influence, I’ll use it for Your Kingdom. Then influence comes, and suddenly we’re worried about protecting our platform. We pray, God, if You provide the resources, we’ll use them generously. Then the resources come, and suddenly we’re afraid to lose them.

Hannah didn’t allow the answer to her prayer to make her forget the prayer itself.

Leadership requires us to remember what we promised God when we needed Him most. Success has a strange way of rewriting our memories. We can start believing we were always this capable, always this strategic, always this gifted. Hannah reminds us to remember where it came from.

Hannah recognized that God was the One who fulfilled the greatest desire of her heart by giving her a child. And while she was getting to live out that answered prayer, she remembered the commitment she had made.

But what about after the dream comes true? What about after the prayer is answered? What about after success comes?

That’s where leaders have to learn surrender after success.

This may be the most difficult kind of surrender for a leader. Hannah had prayed for Samuel, cried for Samuel, carried Samuel, held Samuel, and raised Samuel. And then she brought him to the Tabernacle and said, “Now I am giving him to the Lord, and he will belong to the Lord his whole life” (1 Samuel 1:28).

She SURRENDERED AFTER SUCCESS.

For pastors and leaders, I think this is where the real test often comes. Can I still hold with open hands what God has allowed me to build? Can I surrender the ministry after it grows, the title after I’ve earned it, or the influence after people finally know my name? Can I surrender the strategy that worked last time? Can I even surrender the position if God asks me to?

It’s easy to say, “This is God’s church,” when the church is struggling. It can become much harder when you’ve spent years helping build it.

But the church was never mine. The people aren’t mine. The platform isn’t mine. The influence isn’t mine. The resources aren’t mine. It was always His.

That doesn’t mean we don’t lead well, work hard, strategize, dream, or take responsibility. We should do all of those things. But stewardship and ownership are very different things. Healthy leaders take tremendous responsibility for what God has entrusted to them without ever forgetting Who actually owns it.

This is what OPEN-HANDED WORSHIP looks like, and I believe it’s the posture God wanted from us all along.

What Hannah does next might be my favorite part of the story. She worships—not after getting Samuel, but after giving Samuel back.

In 1 Samuel 2, Hannah prays, “My heart rejoices in the Lord!... No one is holy like the Lord! There is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.”

That’s open-handed worship.

For leaders, worship has to continually remind us that our identity was never supposed to come from the thing we’re leading. Our attendance can go up or down. Our influence can grow or shrink. Our organization can experience incredible seasons and incredibly difficult ones. People can applaud us today and criticize us tomorrow. But none of those things change who God is.

Maybe one of the healthiest things a leader can regularly do is open their hands and pray, “God, thank You for trusting me with this. But it’s still Yours. The church is Yours. The team is Yours. The opportunity is Yours. The influence is Yours. The future is Yours.”

I’ll work hard. I’ll lead well. I’ll steward it faithfully. But I refuse to confuse stewardship with ownership.

Hold the ministry loosely. Hold the platform loosely. Hold the success loosely. But hold your commitment to God tightly. Because the goal of leadership was never simply to become successful. The goal is to remain surrendered if success ever comes.