Beauty For Ashes: The True Price of Surrender
Today I learned that when I rely on digital apps for navigation, my sense of direction grows weaker. That part of my brain, the hippocampus, literally shrinks. I just wanted to find the quickest way to the grocery store. This was not a bargain I knew I was making.
But my maps app isn’t the only thing asking for a sacrifice. I surrender privacy for access to social media, individual identity in exchange for group identity, freedom in exchange for security.
Security, community, power - everything we want demands a sacrifice. Our selves are currency, paid out to others in exchange for the life we want.
Pleasing a Transactional God
And for many years I thought of God in the same way. Guarding the gate to everything I desired, one hand holding the hammer of hell, the other hand open with a great outstretched palm. What I got from God, from life, was determined by what I gave up.
Without realizing it, I had adopted a very pagan view of God. Paganism has taken many forms through history - the worship of sun or moon, of idols, of spirits, or of power itself. But pagan religions typically have one thing in common: they are transactional. Farmers sacrificed goats to Thor to seek favorable weather, Babylonians sacrificed animals to Ishtar for military victory.
Ancient Israel practiced animal and food sacrifices specified by Moses. And there appears to be a transactional dynamic to them — commit this sin, and make this sacrifice. But, the Torah and New Testament are full of passages that say sacrifice is not a way to purchase God’s favor. The prophet Hosea, later quoted by Jesus, wrote, “For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.[1]” The writer of Hebrew stated it directly, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.[2]”
What God Really Asks
So what does God want from me? Simply put, God wants all of me. God’s command to Israel, repeated by Jesus to his followers, said, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.[3]” God does not demand a sanitized, perfected, best-effort version of me. The heart of God longs for my best and my worst. He asks for my love and my fears, my devotion and my doubts, my accomplishments and my failures. King David wrote, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart.[4]”
But why? Why would an all-powerful divine being want anything from me? God certainly does not need anything I can offer. God said to Job, “Who has given me anything that I need to pay back? Everything under heaven is mine.[5]” He does not keep a trophy case of second rate dreams and imperfect pleasures surrendered to him by humanity. Psalms says “I do not need the bulls from your barns or the goats from your pens. For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.[6]”
Freedom to Receive
God does not ask me to surrender because he wants to take, he asks me to surrender because he wants to give. God is not some power hungry being obsessed with controlling everything. If that were the case, he would not have created me with free will. Surrender is not about controlling me, and it is not about taking away my freedom. God wants me to lay down what I have so he can give me something better. Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.[7]”
Jesus asked Zacceaus to surrender his perch in the tree, to give up a place of relative safety and security, to walk through a crowd of people who hated him, and stand face to face with a man so powerful even the weather obeyed him. But in return, Zacceaus hosted Jesus, someone Christians believe was God in the flesh, for dinner.
The prophet Isaiah (later quoted by Jesus) spoke of a God who exchanges our worst for his best. “The LORD God’s spirit is upon me…to bring good news…to comfort all who mourn…to give them a crown in place of ashes, oil of joy in place of mourning, a mantle of praise in place of discouragement.[8]”
This exchange of good for bad is mirrored in our biology. Psychologist Carsten Wrosch found that people who cannot let go of unattainable goals have worse physical health. We were designed to let go.
Several years ago I struggled mightily with the pain of a broken dream, and the fight to resurrect it. I finally reached a moment when I surrendered that dream to God. I felt a sense of loss, but also a lightness at no longer carrying a burden of unrealized hope.
Beyond relief, in my journal I also described a surprising feeling of hope, anticipation, even excitement. Letting go of yesterday somehow made tomorrow look better. Somewhere inside, I think my heart sensed the truth behind this promise Jesus made, “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it.[9]” Surrender was the doorway to victory.
He asks me to drop my stone, so that my hand is free to pick up a diamond.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Hosea 6:6 ESV
[2] Hebrews 10:1,4
[3] Deuteronomy 6:4-5 NLT
[4] Psalm 51:17
[5] Job 41:11 NLT
[6] Psalms 50:9-10 NLT
[7] Matthew 11:28 NLT
[8] Isaiah 61:1-3 CEB
[9] Matthew 16:25
2 Likes
Comments