Spiraling Up

Welcome to a place were you can lay down all of your burdens. You can lay down all of your fears. You can be free like a child. You can be completely at peace now.

What? How?

Surrender, duh. But I got lost somewhere along the way the last few months. I took "surrender" and made it mean "give up things as I think of them" instead of just "give up". I started making the list for my moral inventory and it became a laundry list of things that I would surrender. I took the terms of the surrender into my hands and took control back. It would be like Japan saying to the United States after WWII, "We surrender! but we'll make a list of things that we want to surrender and let you in as we see fit." Not much of a surrender.

What I've realized as I reached the end of myself last weekend was that I need to surrender my attempts to surrender. Yep, true to form, I cannot do anything good on my own, including surrender. So, my prayer is now revised. This is looking like what could be the foundation of my relationship with God, behold:

God,

I pray that you will give me submission in all things. I am willing because I have seen enough of you to know that are a good God. I believe that will take care of me and that I will be best off in your will. Therefore I desire to surrender to it, but I have seen that I'm powerless to do so despite my best efforts. I need you in all ways and wish to rest in your love. I believe, help my unbelief.

I've been praying this prayer for the last two days and so far, so good. I feel all the peace that I felt in the beginning. Every time I feel myself starting to feel anxious or unsure I pray that God gives me submission of my fear. Every time I feel powerless or insecure I admit my powerlessness and pray for submission to God's truth. It seems too bold to say that peace and contentment could be this simple but the Bible does say to come before God like a child. In complex theological discourse I see only attempts to control God, control the behavior of God and control our own lives. I'm not saying that theology is bad, but in comparison with the practical truth of surrender to God theology seems kind of elementary and petty. Something like train-wheels for faith. I think I will leave this topic because I can't say much more without being flagrantly offensive. The important thing is that the concerns of life are now out of my hands.

In receiving a surrendered heart, all the commands of God become compulsive. They are like ripples in a pond vibrating out from the disturbance that is God's power in my life. I don't fret about how to be a better Christian. It takes faith to believe that God will fulfill these things in me without effort on my part. This becomes a little easier to live with when you think that the One who engineered the very mind that ponders Him is in control. He is greater than the sum of all the energy contained in the universe and His love for me is greater than the sum of all the love that has poured from lovers over human history. He loves me so much that He relinquished all the control of the universe to die at my hands. For me. All these thoughts make what ever I little push I could give seem pretty laughable.

I believed that God was pursing me, but I was more concerned with my pursuit of Him. I made the mistake of believing that I needed to. God wanted me and He came for me. He won me. I love Him now. And I believe that all that infinite power is continuing to pursue me. Infinite Love is loving me right now. It's hard to worry about whether I am giving enough money at church, or if I'm loving my neighbors enough when I think about who God is. His will will be done, and it is good.