the surrender (day 1/7)

Prayer: God, I want to surrender to You. Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow. I want to surrender to You. I want to surrender. I need help to surrender. Surrender doesn’t mean calling it quits. It’s transferring the ownership of burden. It’s giving back the wheel to Jesus. It’s saying that it’s actually better if it’s not my way. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen.

I think I idolize control. It’s how I feel good and safe. Order the same Pad Thai every time because you know it’s good. Stay around the same group of people because it’s familiar. Choose the path that everyone tells you to follow. It feels safer in the shallows, but God, You tell me that real life isn’t safe even if we try to avoid it. It’s a disservice to yourself to live only wetting your feet, thinking it’s better on the outskirts, when in reality the waves will come and crash down, but you never learned to float because your body lives off fear.

It’s actually not hard to float, but our body fights the act of giving up control so we fidget, splash, and twist ourselves into knots only to be gripped by fear when the water tickles our ears. Floating in water is a release of what you think will happen if you let go of your bodily control and just let yourself “be”.

They say you should save a drowning person after they go unconscious because in their state of pure adrenaline and fear, they’ll drown their incoming savior along with them. They only get saved after they stop struggling. I think God is doing that with me, letting me tire out myself from fighting and trying and having any chance to take any glory for myself -- then coming in when I finally give in, and let God be God.

“Be still and know that I am God” - Psalms 46:10

Trying to make logical sense out of a situation is anything but surrender. I thought I understood God, I thought I knew myself, but God is gently teaching me to be less and less dependent on myself. For the past few months, I’ve been praying over the dreams I believed God gave to me, but before I knew it, how I thought they would come to fruition died. Things I had no control over. I was confused. I thought I did everything right. It’s normal to think the more we try the better the outcome will be. The American Dream is basically “work hard enough and all your dreams come true”.

God isn’t like that. God isn’t happy with us based on efforts alone because they’re all never going to be enough. “Well, isn’t that cruel of God?” God wants to be the one to do the work in our lives. God wants to be the one to make things happen because He’s the only one who can execute perfectly. Your life is too precious for Him to let You run wild with it.

God wants us to believe in Him to be good and able and capable and willing to do the work it takes to make our lives the best imaginable lives they can be. Honestly, I don’t know if I always believe that. I know in my head, but my heart is slow to follow.

Today is a day of surrender for me. I’m not executing it very well, but I think I’m trying too hard to surrender like people try too hard to float. In order to float, you have to let yourself sink a little. We think sinking is bad. We think sinking means we’re giving up. We think sinking is a sign of our failure. Sinking a little means survival. Refusing to sink is how we drown. Regardless, you can’t control it because you will go down, but how it happens, how much pain you go through, how long it takes for you to be rescued, all depends on you.

The truth is I’m crushed thinking about how things have not gone the way I planned. I’m confused. I’m lost. I’m no longer confident in myself. I feel lonely. I want answers. I want God to open the skies and speak in a booming voice. I want to know why it had to happen this way. Was I wrong to believe? What happened?

God, where are You?

As I process my loss, I have to come to terms with the fact that God allowed these things to happen. God allowed it to be like this. God wanted it to happen this way. It’s difficult to reconcile pain and suffering with God without blame being given to God. It’s difficult to still trust and believe. It’s difficult to dream again, but God didn’t leave us with dreams to be left unfulfilled.

God isn’t cruel. God doesn’t leave you with dreams that will never be real, but He takes the dreams you have and makes them better than they could ever be if your own limits were on them. Don’t limit yourself and the dreams God has for you.

The truth is I am not there yet, not fully surrendered, but bit by bit, I break off parts and offer the pieces at the foot of the cross. Every moment, I have to choose whether it’s going to be worth fighting the sinking feeling or letting myself relax and be saved sooner. I close my eyes, and I see myself handing over the dreams - broken, tear-stained, and crumpled - and Jesus takes each piece and makes a new image. He speaks a new word over the period (like the punctuation mark) we put in the story because we think it ends in tragedy when it’s only moments before “but then…”

We thought the dream was over, but then…

We gave up on anything changing in an impossible situation, but then…

We had to give up on trying to make something work out, but then…

How do we know the “but then” exists? How do we know that the story doesn’t end in the midst of our pain and tragedy? How do we know this only a part of the journey but we have not arrived at the destination?

Jesus died on the cross, but then…in 3 days he rose from the grave. In a feat of the impossible. In the face of mockers. In the worst defeat the universe had ever seen, Jesus “but then” death and sin and shame. Jesus’ death was not where the Bible ended.

Jesus.

Jesus is the only reason we can ever have hope that the “but then” in our stories exist. Otherwise we live one tragedy after another. We think of closing the book when you’re only a few chapters in.

Did you know that even in defeat, God can be glorified? God was most glorified in defeat. That same power lives in you. It is alive and active. It is working in your life.

“But then” doesn’t mean things turn out the way you wanted. “But then” isn’t a guarantee for your happiness, but God’s guarantee to be true to Himself in your life: good.

God is good.

Say that to yourself when you're crying. Say that when your heart feels like it’s being ripped out of your chest. Say that forever because it’s the only thing you can know for true certainty. That God is good. God loves you. God is making a way where there was no way.

I will not always believe in the goodness of God, but God doesn’t enact goodness based on my belief. I don’t even have to look and it sees me. I run away and it chases after me. I try and hide and it finds me. In the ashes of my dreams, God is laying the groundwork for bigger plans.

God said those dreams were too small, good as they were and they were good, to hold the weight of all the glory God was ready to pour out into my life. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

Surrendering isn’t defeat.

Surrender is how you win the war.

How does that make sense? How does that work? Jesus is the one who makes it happen, our job is to believe, and let it happen. It sounds so simple, but it means that the war doesn’t win on your timing, at the most convenient hour, on your schedule, in the way you wanted it to, and who you wanted to be with while it happens.

Surrender is how I believe that my God - our Lord, our Savior, our Friend, our Shepherd - will take care of what I can’t control. I wish things were different. I still pray for things to change, I still want the dreams to come true - but it’s not what I can hope in - so I have to pray then leave it alone. Stop trying to make things happen my way. I have to surrender.

I have to ask God, then let Him answer and I have to be willing to accept the answer. I have to let it go into God’s hands to win the battle for me. I have to do this because there’s no other way that this will happen without Him. God only funds His own plans. It only works for us if God pays the bill, and we do our part by having the faith to see it out. Believing in the promise. Seeing it before you see it.

I close my eyes and see the dream in my arms, and I hand over the dream to Jesus. I give Jesus what belongs to Him. I let myself grieve. I let myself rest. I give my pain grace.

What we need to know is the “but then” isn’t right away. No one knew what would happen, when it happened, and to this day we don’t know the forces behind how it happened. But it did. “But then” walked towards the disciples, days of crying and mourning over their promise that was crucified, and on a deserted road, the promise came for them.

Read Luke 24:13–32

On the Road to Emmaus
13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him.
17 He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
19 “What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.
28 As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.
30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

For context, the disciples were leaving the place where they saw the promise die, where they saw Jesus’ lifeless body hanging on the cross. They weren’t at their most faithful, they were leaving their faith. They weren’t the ones who were “praying enough, believing enough, good enough” to make the promise happen.

They no longer called Jesus “the messiah” because how could he be when he died? Calling him a prophet meant that they no longer believed in who he said he was. They had their promise defeated. Their faces were downcast. They had given up. They were going back home.

Did they feel humiliated? Betrayed? Did they feel lied to? Like they heard wrong? Where was the promise now? What about what Jesus had told them? Didn't they see the miracles? Were they mistaken? Was the promise just a fantasy?

In the middle of mourning the death of their promise, Jesus himself -- the promise in flesh and blood -- not yet revealed in fullness of his glory to them, explained to them the message of the Gospel and the prophecy of Jesus’ death in order to bring life. The promise was always meant to die for greater glory to come.

The greatness of our hope in God is that the promise comes even after you even when you stop believing in it. The promise comes when we have given up, when we have failed, and when we tell ourselves that believing in the promise was just a fairytale we told each other. That’s the faith we can have that even when we don’t see the glory of God’s plans, God’s plans will never fail to unfold for our good.

When Jesus, sweating blood, cried out to God, asking if there was another way, God had told him “no”. We hate being told no because we think God is denying us good things, yet God says “no” for the “better yes”. In the middle of our deepest pains, our greatest fears, and the most humiliating shame, does God come and bring the "better yes".

If God didn't say no to Jesus, if God let Jesus live, if God let the promise live like we think it should -- then the greater promise of God's plan for forgiveness through the sacrifice of His one and only son could have never happened. The promise had to die for the greater promise to come.

The promise was from God. You didn't believe in a lie. You didn't buy a fantasy. The promise just wasn't the end of story, and that's where we get caught up. "Why would God let Jesus die? Why would God let my dream from Him die?" because God has a better plan. God's plan didn't have Jesus living but Jesus dying. God wasn't done when the promise died. God isn't finished. The story didn't end there, it was only getting to the good part. The part where we see Jesus come back, the promise for the impossible to happen could finally take place when he rose from the grave, but he had to go to the grave first.

So, when your promise dies, don't go home. Don't turn back. Don't buy into the lie that God didn't give you the promise. There is more to come. There is greater things. There is a greater promise for you.

Sometimes it's already walking beside you, not yet ready to be revealed but ready and waiting for you to recognize the fullness of its glory.

Read my other blogs:

Life Sucks: What do we do about it? How God Works All Things for Good - Blog # 24

Into the Unknown: What is God's Will for my life? - Blog # 25

Watch these sermons:

Vacant Vision // See It Before You See It // Crazyer Faith (Part 5) // Michael Todd

Help I’m Hurting // Are You In Pain? // Help, I’m Hurting // Brie Davis

Listen to:

Leeland - Better Word (Official Live Video)

Surrounded ( Fight My Battles ) - UPPERROOM

I Surrender - Hillsong Worship

Read Part 2: Embracing out Grief: the Sadness of Saturday (day 2/7) - Blog # 28