SURRENDER | Mar 17-23, 2025

To catch up with our Lent journey, check out this post that explains our practice.

“The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need.”

Psalm 23:1, NLT

This last year was a year of learning to ask for help. I confess this isn’t something that comes naturally to me. I tend to be someone who defaults to control. How can I carry all the things and manage all the variables? Sometimes it is easy to live into the illusion that I can craft a sphere of self-sufficiency. The refrain becomes “I’ve got this”. I forget to let God be God, and simultaneously sideline community.

In many ways it took being confronted by my own weakness, my own human frailty, to see all the ways that I’ve grasped for control. Life circumstances meant the breakdown of self-reliance. It became clear that I couldn’t do it all on my own. Of course, this has always been true, but it laid bare the pervasiveness of a mentality of self-sufficiency. When areas of life felt like they could no longer be controlled, I had to learn the way of being instead of doing. Be in God’s presence and receive his love and wisdom. The first step in moving towards life was acknowledging my need and bringing it to God in surrender.

We are created as finite creatures and there is a dependency upon God that is good and beautiful. It is here in the awareness of this reality that life is found. In coming to God in prayer there is movement from self-reliance to vulnerability and intimacy. For me, it was learning to further trust in the goodness of God. Learning to invite other people in. Replacing isolation with relationship and striving with rest. God has a better way that doesn’t involve mustering up the strength to do things on my own, instead it is a way of peace and richness of relationship.

Jesus doesn’t call us to be without lack or have it all figured out before approaching him. Rather it is in those very things the unfinished, unknown, the heavy, the comfortable and the uncomfortable that he calls us to lay down at his feet. It’s a moment-by-moment acknowledgment that he is our good shepherd, and we have all that we need in him.

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READ

Psalm 23

REFLECT

Invite the Holy Spirit into your reflections and welcome the voice of Jesus to help you answer these questions.

1. How is the fear of death showing up in my life as control?

2. What lies am I believing about myself, others, or God that contribute to this fear?

RESPOND

Make confession.

Jesus, I surrender control to you and agree that surrender is the better pathway to life in you.

I renounce the lie that _____________________________________.

Now, choose repentance by turning toward God.

Today I choose to turn away from control and turn toward surrender.

Walk in repentance by turning towards others.

Jesus, who is someone that has been affected by the ways that control has expressed itself in my life? How can I be a person of life towards them by walking in surrender?

RECEIVE

Spend some time listening for the voice of Jesus and receiving his mercy and grace.

What gifts of life do you want to give me in exchange for the fear of death that causes me to turn to control to feel safe?

FAST

As a way of living into your repentance, consider fasting from radio, podcasts, and music. We have constant noise going on in our world, and yet God comes in the still small whisper. What if you were to take a week without constant noise to just let

yourself sit in the silence, to be still before God, and to be present to him in the moment?