We are reflecting this week on what it is to surrender - but I want to be careful here. In religious circles, I’ve often heard surrender used in the sense of us needing to surrender to God’s will for our lives. And that’s a good thing to do, to be sure. But “God’s will for my life” is something that is still somewhat amorphous for most of us. And I’m afraid, due to the religious baggage many of us bring to the table, what most people think about when it comes to “God’s will” is that God’s will is for us to be perfect people - or at least much closer to perfect than who we are at the present. And becoming more perfect people sounds more like work than surrender.
Now, I’m not suggesting that all of us don’t have things we need to work on in our lives; of course we do. But when it comes to spiritual work, rather than working on our spiritual lives, I think we are better off working from our spiritual souls. So surrender is not just about surrendering to God - it is about surrendering to the image of God within us. It is about seeing ourselves, broken as we sometimes may be, as children of God. Instead of thinking about surrendering to God’s will for you, I want to invite you to think about surrendering to God’s love for you.
Mike Yaconelli wrote a beautiful little book a few years back called, Messy Spirituality: God’s Annoying Love for Imperfect People. Yaconelli writes that when Christians use the term ‘spiritual’ to describe someone, they usually use it “to describe people who pray all day long, read their Bibles constantly, never get angry or rattled, possess special powers, and have the inside track to God. Spirituality, for most, has an otherworldly ring to it.” Yaconelli, who was a pastor and nationally recognized youth minister (who was sadly killed in a car accident years ago), admits that he didn’t fit that description, and probably never would. I can relate.
He then goes on to say: “Spirituality is not a formula. It is not a test. It is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are now in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality, not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God’s being present in the mess of our unfixedness.”
Yes! That. Surrender to that. Surrender to the messiness of life, to the messiness of you… and to the God who loves you in the tangledness of it.