Working Towards Full Surrender
Some reflections about life, faith, and what it means to really trust God.
Usually I write this newsletter from scratch, pulling thoughts from my journals or my reflection time while also sharing updates with you about how my cancer is progressing.
This week, I’m going to do something a little different; this week, I’m going to share with you part of an email that I sent an acquaintance of mine after she asked me a question about grief.
I don’t want to give too much information away, since she reached out to me in private, but this person recently experienced a loss that left her with some unanswered questions and, thus, some unresolved issues. Since I know her, but don’t know her well, she felt like I would be in a good position to give her an honest, unbiased answer.
I did my best to comply. And in the process, I wrote down some thoughts that have been percolating for the last several months, if not the last few years. They do a fairly decent job of summarizing many of the lessons that we’ve learned, and especially lessons that I’ve learned that were just for me and my walk with God.
To be truly in love with God is to trust Him in all things. It means full surrender to His power and control over the universe and eternity. It means letting go of the illusion of self-sufficiency and self-determination and holding tightly to the truth that God is our only refuge and strength; He alone is where we should turn, not just in times of trouble, but every day of our lives in all circumstances.
Doesn’t mean we all just retire to some communes and live out our existence as hermits and crackpots that yell at other people about the soon-coming Christ while also trying to sell them handcrafted jewelry we made from old, broken Barbie dolls.
That would be weird.
It means that we must come to grips with the fact that our works do nothing to save us, but we’re still called to work. Our ingenuity does nothing to save us, but we’re still called to look for solutions to the challenges we face. Our kindness does nothing to save us, but we’re still called to make the character of Christ known through the way we live and treat others.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
The email text will do a much better job of laying out the thoughts I want to share, so here is is, with selective edits and changes in order to preserve anonymity for my acquaintance (now friend!). I will definitely want to hear your comments on this, and will be happy to discuss it with anyone over Zoom or a phone call or even a live text chat.
God has always desired so much more for us as His people, and we’ve too often chosen the lesser life because we crave and hunger for control. I pray that these thoughts will help change that for someone today.
Dear Friend—
I wanted to respond to your question with the following caveat: my answers are not going to be very traditional. My wife and I have experienced some great disappointments in our walk with God, and so we don’t talk about suffering quite like others do.
Personally, I think the feeling of things being unresolved would be there regardless of how your friend died, especially since so many people were trying to help them avoid that fate. Even people who watch their loved ones pass away over time (like my wife did with her sister, who died from appendix cancer a few years ago) still struggle with unresolved questions.
Candidly, there are a great many things that God leaves unknown to us. It’s not because He’s cruel or unkind; but because knowing those details or answers simply isn’t something He deigns beneficial or necessary for us.
Faith in God and Jesus doesn’t guarantee answers to our deepest questions, despite the fact we often act as if it does. I think faith actually opens us up far more to a life of doubt and uncertainty; rather than God revealing the answers to mysteries, He reveals more mysteries because the not knowing drives us deeper into our relationship and reliance on Him.
Honest faith is dependent faith; we can’t make it a day without the help of God, and yet so many Christians want to do just that. They want to live without a true dependence on God because they think it’s what God wants: a bunch of independent, self-sufficient mini-gods that love Him but don’t need Him. I was living that way before my cancer hit. The more self-reliant I became, the more I felt like I was doing exactly what God wanted.
In truth, I think it’s more what the Enemy wants than what God wants. After all, he fancied himself a mini-god and prided himself on living that out. It’s ironic that so many Americans read the Scriptures and see the repeated admonition for us to rely on God, trust in God, look to God for our provision, and yet still walk away with the idea that we need to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and show God we can do it. And even more silly is the fact that when we inevitably can’t do it, we don’t turn to God and confess our dependence—instead, we ask Him for a power boost or a miracle so we don’t look so pitiful in the face of our failure.
I realize this is a rambling response, but I think you’re tapping into something my wife and I have been journeying towards for the last seven years: full dependence on God means full trust in God. We can’t and shouldn’t know everything, and there are times when we have to live with unresolved feelings about events in life, or life itself. But that doesn’t change God’s goodness or nature; it doesn’t prove Him false in any way; it just reveals our own willing ignorance when it comes to what God truly desires from us His people.
Even if your friend had accepted help and lived, whenever their death came there would still be a sense of things being unresolved or unfulfilled for you. That’s because some things—death especially—are beyond our ability to understand. Maybe we’ll have all of the answers when we get to Heaven; if so, that’ll be a blessing. But I’m starting to wonder if maybe we won’t have the answers, just a full knowledge of the character and person of God that renders the desire for answers moot.
I wonder if seeing God face to face won’t answer our questions, but instead will fulfill our longings, which is what we’re really chasing to begin with. We want peace, not answers; we hunger for love and connection, not the ability to win at some pretend theological Jeopardy! game.
As I said, this is an unconventional answer, but it’s the best I have out of my experience, my reading of the Bible, and my continuing growth as a child of God.
The answer to all of our longings isn’t trivia or a sense of understanding; it’s full assurance that we are loved by God above all else and that love can never be broken.
Hope this helps you in some way and doesn’t trip you up as you move through your grief. I am truly honored and humbled that you would ask my opinion on such a personal and powerful topic.
Best,
Jason
Prayer requests for this week:
Jason—for chemo on July 20th and a thoracentesis (lung drainage) sometime the week of July 26; for strength and stamina to increase; for me to find a CPAP mask that doesn’t make me feel like I’m being smothered with a pillow; for continued clarity and wisdom in my professional work with Maxwell; for some progress on my book design and layout so I can get it into Amazon for an August launch; for relief from minor aches and pains that hurt just enough to be slightly annoying; for mental strength and spiritual sustenance.
Rachel—for strength and stamina to finish out these last days of ballet intensive; for wisdom and insight in her studies and devotionals; for relief from worrying about me and my condition; for her to know how much she is appreciated and valued, not only by her family, but by other people she has blessed with her life.
Ella—to finish ballet intensive strong with a good performance Friday night; for her to catch up on her over-the-summer school work; for her to continue to find moments of rest and relaxation so she can go into the school year refreshed and ready for anything; for her spiritual growth and development; for her to continue maturing into a young woman of character and values.
Jon—to continue finding new horizons to explore; for continued creativity and imagination in his digital design work; for him to continue developing small habits of self-discipline; for him to enjoy time by the pool with his mom and (hopefully) sister; for his spiritual growth and development; for him to continue maturing into a young man of character and integrity; for him to never lose his sense of kindness and servant-leadership.
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My closing thought for this week is that weakness doesn’t have to be a weakness at all. It’s can be a pathway to strength and growth if we’ll be forgiving enough of ourselves to follow it. It’s why Jesus taught that people who are spiritually impoverished—spiritually weak—will receive the Kingdom of Heaven. You can’t make it in if you believe that you can do most of the work Christ accomplished on the cross and trusting Jesus is just the little cherry on top of your spiritual resumé.1
We teach at work that you should live most of your life in your strength zone, the nexus2 where your giftedness, talent, and purpose merge to serve the rest of the world at your peak capacity. It’s a true and valid principle because your strength zone is you at your best; you can serve, assist, lead, and add value to other people with enjoyable ease.
That’s not the case when you live out of your weaknesses.
Yet that doesn’t make weakness a bad thing. Instead, it turns weakness into a virtue3 because it humbles you; it keeps you from stumbling headlong into a realm of darkness where you end up serving the very sin you’d love to erase from your life. The humility of admitting your weakness opens the door to receiving the strength that comes only through grace and faith alone.
This newsletter contains a lot of religious talk, so some people have likely checked out by now. But to those who’ve stayed, let me first say thank you, and let me secondly say that admitting and owning your weakness is the only way to Christ.4
You can’t come before the crucified and risen Lord of Creation still believing that you’ve got the ability to handle most of your problems on your own, and you just need a little “fire insurance”5 to get you into eternity. You can only come to Christ when you are completely and utterly aware of your own brokenness and weakness. Christ welcomes those who acknowledge they are lost and need a Savior to set things right for them.
Being an industrious person is not a sin in and of itself; being a hard worker in your career, your family life, and your community relationships is to be commended. It shows you value other people and want to make a difference with your life. It shows you understand your true purpose in life: to be part of God’s family and live in harmony with your Heavenly Father and spiritual brothers and sisters.
But when you begin believing and behaving as if the works you do are somehow a credit in your “salvation” account, and if you just do enough of them consistently that you’ll show God you are a good little soldier, you’re drifting into the devil’s theology.
That’s because the devil’s belief is fueled by pride: pride in his own powers, pride in his self-sufficiency, pride in his superiority over others. The devil is convinced of two things: he doesn’t need grace and he can wound God by showing His people how to take the gift of grace and turn it into a better, higher, faster version of the Protestant Work Ethic.6
Yet, when it comes to salvation, God doesn’t care.
The work of humans, as Paul put it in his letter to the church in Philippi, amounts to nothing more than a pile of garbage7 in the eyes of God. As harsh as that sounds, it’s nonetheless true—nothing we do, no matter how noble or significant, can impress God if it’s done outside a relationship with Jesus.
When we’ve truly trusted Christ, when we truly understand that our works don’t get us closer to heaven, then and only then are we free to work at our full strength because we have the Spirit of God living within us, empowering our every move. And not just empowering us, but whispering the truth of who we are, which is who we’ve always been and will always be. We are released into reality.
And that reality is, you and I are stronger and more powerful than we have ever dreamed.
Here’s hoping we can accept that truth and hunker down inside of it, until we are fully transformed into the people God created us to be. Here’s hoping that we can live fully in our strength zones, working to show people the character and heart of Christ through our every interaction. Here’s hoping we relax and trust that the Father will fulfill his promise in Romans 8:28—”And we know that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good—with those who have been called according to his purpose.”
Our journey over the last eight years has taught us a lot, but I’m still learning, still uncovering deep strongholds that sneak their way into my thinking and give me an excuse to hide. To retreat behind false humility or, worse, to fade away thanks to cowardice.
I’m still learning to live as my true self, and the kind words and affirmations of my current teammates and professional acquaintances has produced a level of safety and encouragement I’ve never felt before. That safe environment allows me to step forward and believe what they say about me:
That I’m making a difference, one word at a time.
And, they have the data to prove it.
In Christ, Paul says, we are more than conquerors,8 we are children of God with full access to the Father at any time. We can go before God in prayer and ask questions, seek blessings, and find that what we sought wasn’t what we needed. We also find that God graciously provides what we need and more, so we can live fully and freely.
We are all working toward full surrender every day. All it takes is giving God our full trust, full acceptance, and full obedience.
As always, thanks for reading. I’ll be back next week with another update.
Best,
Jason
Sorry for the mixed metaphors. I would never advise anyone to put fruit—real or otherwise—at the top of their resumé. It tends to get messy.
You can thank George Hoskins and the Disney+ show, Loki, for the use of that word. I’ve spent a lot of time researching the meaning, history and usage of nexus due to its sudden, almost casual, use in my daily life. And, being a word nerd, I naturally had to find a place to use it myself, and where better than the newsletter I send out?
Which would be humility, of course. Humility is the recognition of your own imperfections and accepting those limitations as part of who you are, instead of rejecting them or pretending they don’t exist. To borrow rom John Maxwell, “Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself; it’s thinking of yourself, less.”
2 Corinthians 12:9—”But [Jesus] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
There are a lot of verses that cover the idea of weakness being a virtue in the Kingdom of God; while I don’t read this particular publication, the editorial staff at Country Living put together a listicle of “25 Encouraging Bible Verses About Strength” and many of them actually discuss weakness. I encourage you to read the listicle and maybe bookmark it, for those days when you’re struggling and need a reminder of God’s love for you.
An old school term that was often used by evangelists and other evangelical speakers to cheapen and shame people whom they felt didn’t come to Christ in the right way. The fire against which those people needed insurance was the Lake of Fire, an image in John’s Revelation that most apocalyptic Christians have grabbed as the image of the ultimate hell.
Probably one of the more influential, if popularly unknown, books on Christian duty, The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber has shaped policy, public programming, and the theological belief of millions of Americans (the last link is behind a paywall, FYI). And all because it provides a handy roadmap and justification for Christians to work their butts off in order to get into heaven.
In some translations, “pile of garbage” is translated as “pile of dung,” or as my Southern family might put it, “a big pile of she-yit.”
That would be the promise of Romans 8:37-39.
There is a saying that "God doesn't give us more than we can handle." My saying is that "God doesn't give me more than He and I together can handle."