Surrender Is Hard

We are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8

Have you ever believed a thing to be true and then acted in a manner completely inconsistent with that belief? There are those for whom right belief just naturally leads to right behavior. I don’t understand such people. My mind just doesn’t work that way. My life problem is that I can know what’s right, while my appetite overrules all reason, leading me to engage in behavior that I know to be destructive.

I know what healthy eating is. I just prefer unhealthy eating. I know how to be productive with my time. I just often prefer to waste my time. I know how to follow God daily and I know that what I should do. I just prefer to follow me, doing whatever I want.

For me, right belief, translating into right action requires conscious, purposeful choices daily . . . sometimes many times a day. I have no problem understanding that I’m a mess on my own (Step One of AA). It’s easy for me to believe that God is the answer to my life problems (Step Two of AA). Step three though – surrendering my will to God – is hard.

Most of us, if we are honest, struggle with this one. If we call ourselves Christians, we believe in today’s passage in our minds. We know that God made us, and we claim to follow him. Our lives though, reveal that we spend almost all of our time, money, and energy pursuing our own path.

That path may or may not be obviously destructive, but the life spent in pursuit of the American dream, if it comes at the expense of following God, is no less destructive in the end, than the life spent in pursuit of drugs. Any pursuit of self, at the expense of God, is, by God’s definition, destructive.

If we want our actions to be consistent with our beliefs, then we must continually choose to surrender our will to God’s. In doing so, we turn from our own destructive path to embrace the life, joy, and peace that only he can bring. Surrender is hard, but this is how we become who we were made to be.