Hi there! I’m so grateful you’re along with me on this journey of seeking to understand the core of our faith, beyond all the hoopla that some parts of organized religion seem to need to throw at us. I hope it’s helpful to you! And please let me know if you have any questions or topics you’d like to see covered here!

This week I’m wrapping up what has been a pretty important series to me about surrender. I’d love to have you catch up if you can before you read this week’s essay.

I began talking about how the idea of actually being in control is a fallacy. Read part 1: “Surrendering the Reins of False-Control” here

Then I wrote about how we are actually surrendering to find freedom and peace that we’ve been craving… Read part 2: “Surrendering to Freedom” here

Then last week, I explored the concept of identity and how when we finally surrender control and our agenda, we are free to be who we were made to be. Read or Watch part 3: “Surrendering Your Labels” here

Today I want to continue with the analogy of the boat that I introduced last week...but adding in a huge dose of hope. I talked last week about how life forms barnacles on the bottom and sides of our boats (some of our own doing, some not) that hinder our boats from sailing as intended by the great mastercrafter who created them.

For me, my fear, self-pity, ego, selfish desires, ambition, my penchant for control are all barnacles on my boat that I continually need to have scraped off.

What are your barnacles?

The Cleaning Up Is Not All Up To Us

The really good news is that cleaning our boat is not all up to us! Hooray! But this cleaning up, this redemption process, won’t happen without your willingness to let the Director of this great play have the reins. This is where surrender comes in. We have to surrender to something or someone.

This is where we can choose to trust what the Bible says, that when we surrender our desire to control our lives and the need to have things go our way, we’re not surrendering to an enemy who is going to put us in prison or hold us captive with crazy demands. No, we’re actually surrendering to a compassionate leader who has nothing but our best interests in mind, has nothing but complete and unconditional love for us, and is literally setting us free for freedom’s sake in order to let us live life as was intended from the beginning. Time to raise the sails!

As Richard Rohr says in Breathing Underwater, “We have been graced for a truly sweet surrender, if we can radically accept being radically accepted—for nothing!”

I imagine the only way the Israelites were able to traverse the desert for so long was because they trusted their leader. The vision was cast for their Promised Land and they kept their faith alive by keeping the vision alive, even throughout the hardships they faced.

What’s Your Promised Land?

For me, the idea of the Promised Land is less about a particular destination toward which I’m heading and more about learning a new way to walk through every single day I’m alive. Armed with faith, trust, hope, and love, I can accept whatever comes my way. I don’t have to fight against life any longer.

What’s taken us so long? And why aren’t we living this way already? It is because we’ve been taught a false gospel, one that had more to do with us getting what we wanted out of life, thinking that would certainly make God look good. The truth is found when we remember what Jesus did—He came to show us how to die. And most of us have been living desperately trying to avoid dying. You can’t really put “Come to our church and learn how to die” on a billboard and expect people to show up for your bleak message.

Unless the dying is more about living authentically. And the surrendering is more about freedom than captivity.

You won’t be able to keep people away.