an act of vulnerability

Surrender is the word I’m praying through this year. To live more committed to this arms raised, palms out posture to life, there’s a searching of my soul and a seeking of my Father. I want to know what it is I need to surrender, what I might need to die to or give up in order to live more faithful to His purposes. I’m good at clinging tight to what I like. I actually think I have really good ideas, so what’s the harm in living them out, right? Well, let me tell you something….Africa was not my good idea. It was not my good vision for our family. Had I not surrendered a few self made dreams and expectations of how to live healthy and happy, to obediently respond to the opportunity laid before us by God, I would have missed out on the creative ways God shaped our family to look a little more like him. This “what I know now” is what makes me want to embrace more fully the surrendered life. Here’s what God has already shown me in my seeking: surrender is an act of vulnerability. And it’s really only when we trust who or what is on the other side, that we will willingly become vulnerable, willingly surrender. It’s to these trusting people or places or values that we let down our defenses, we open up, and we make ourselves moldable. For that’s what true vulnerability is – it’s not the revealing of who you are, or the openness with our story. Vulnerability is the willingness to be shaped by others. Letting their testimony and wisdom teach you. Letting their encouragement fill you up. Letting their choices change you, or even hurt you. Here’s the other thing I’m understanding a little bit better: there are two responses in the act of surrender: submission and sacrifice. To submit is to make yourself soft to another person. To entrust them with what is valuable to you. To rely on what they have to offer. To sacrifice is to do without on behalf of another. To relinquish your will in order to embrace someone else’s. To hand over what you have or want to the care of another.

And some things are harder to sacrifice than others. Sometimes God asks us to sacrifice the very special thing he gave us.

Why? What is the purpose of deep soul wrenching sacrifices? Maybe because he knows a better way. Maybe because what he really wants is for his people to trust him. Maybe because in our emptiness and in our trust, he wants to provide.

I’m not always willing to walk that hill toward the altar. But sometimes I run up, knowing in full confidence that the Lamb will be waiting for me instead.

For God’s ways really are higher than our ways. And his thoughts really are higher than our thoughts. And they’re good. They always have been, and they always will be. And so I hope that I will give my life to the purposes that are not my own.

The giving of my life will never look quite like this, quite like Jesus. But there are everyday little crosses to carry. Everyday little trips to the altar. Everyday little deaths we must die. Might these teach me in the ways of surrender so when I’m faced with a cross I don’t think I can bear, my faith will be strengthened from the little surrenders and the “what I know now.”