Surrender to love

I grew up with a sense that God’s love is foundational to Christianity. We learned about it in Sunday school and sang about it with action songs. God loves me - this has always been central to my faith. But a few years ago I read a book that started me off on a journey of relating to this love differently. For a lot of my life I struggled with the chasm between the reality of God’s love and the ability to let it in or accept it at a level that is transformative. In all honesty, no matter how much I tried to allow this in or spend time in God’s presence, it would only go so far. I was still trapped in systems of earning. We teach the first bit in Church: ‘God loves you’, but we don’t often teach the how. How do we live from a place of unconditional love, when we hear through so many different messages from the world that we are not enough? How do we fight against the strength of shame and guilt? How do we make our home in love, interacting with it not as a concept, but as an address; a home; a dwelling place? 

It was the book ‘Surrender to Love’ by David Benner that set me off on a journey of relating to love differently. After thirty years of work in this area, Benner found that love by itself is not transformative. Every person is loved by God, but many of us are still searching for this love, remaining unsatisfied and even desperate. But he believes that it is when love is paired with the word surrender that we begin to see change. A posture of surrender requires vulnerability. It isn’t something that we do, it is more something that we don’t do. It is like lying back and floating on a river. All we need to do is rest, relax and trust that our weight is held and carried along. But our tendency is to look up or to splash around in panic, to check if we are still floating or to maintain some control somehow. Surrender is a mindset, a posture and a habit that needs to be continually practised and returned to. 

Surrender can sound like a scary concept. We surrender to so many things in life that let us down. We learn to build walls, to stop giving ourselves over to things that might cause us pain. And a lot of things we choose to lean on and trust in this life do let us down. But this is where the Christian faith invites us into something radical. As Benner puts it: ‘Only God deserves absolute surrender, because only God can offer absolutely dependable love.’ God’s love doesn’t say everything is going to be ok all of the time. But it does say: come at your darkest and come at your weakest, and the strength of this love will remain unchanged. We can bend it, jump on it, reject it and throw it around and nothing changes. God’s love for you is an overwhelming force and an unconditional beacon of light that shines onto your life and calls you worthy. Even when you are far off, even when you are lost and even when you are confused. Control says come to God when it makes sense and when you feel good about yourself. Surrender says come as you are. David Benner said that after thirty years of research what he noticed was that love is only transformational when we let it in with vulnerability. It is easy to do something good and feel pleased about ourselves. It is easy to temporarily encounter God’s love when we are on a high. But this won’t last. It is much more difficult to float back on a river of intense, unstoppable love when we are at our darkest. The reason that I believe I struggled as a Christian for so many years? I forgot to come when I wasn’t feeling it. I forgot to come with my groans and my shouts and my acting out. When I felt like this I hid in shame. And the only difference is that God invites us to come and hide in him instead. To receive permission to be broken. There is nowhere else in life that we will get this permission. 

Learning to trust in this love will take time. It’s a process, and we will inevitably end up judging ourselves by the world’s standards. But it is a journey that we are all invited on. A lot of my focus as I continue writing posts will be on how we can learn to orientate our lives around this love. There is a lot of practial wisdom out there and I plan to keep writing about this. I’ve been a Christian my whole life, but it is only in the last ten years or so that I’ve started to build my rhythms and habits that help me to stay rooted in God’s love. And I can feel myself changing. Bit by bit, slowly but surely, I can feel that I no longer worry as much about what others think. I no longer feel as much pressure to always get it right. I find myself wanting to come to God more, rather than it feeling like a chore. Ironically, learning to let myself off is transforming me far more than striving and control ever did. I like how Benner puts it; ‘My attachment to sinful ways of being is much too strong to ever be undone by mere willpower.’  

We can only come to God in vulnerability, as our true selves, and it is doing this that will bring transformation and meet the longings our hearts are crying out for. When we regularly go to God, fists unclenched, acknowledging the darkness within, and hear his love over and over again, then we will become transformed. Just practicing surrender has slowly but surely begun to change me at a deep heart level. And yes, I constantly forget and find myself in a shame cave of my own making, but every reminder drives the truth of God’s love down deeper. I get to be the prodigal daughter, constantly returning, and the father never falters in his run towards me. I find myself on a gradual and meandering journey of many mistakes, but after 37 years, I finally know that I am on the right path.