The Prayer of Surrender

Dean Charles Whiston taught us the Prayer of Surrender when I was a first year student in Berkely Baptist Divinity School.  I have prayed is most days since.  As I reflect on surrender, I recognize tension in the way a person LIVES his or her surrender.

While, on the one had, it means Acceptance of what is. "It is what it is," we say.  True.  Surrender, for me, means to think (because God gave us our minds) as clearly as possible.  Surrender means, to me, to use my initiative to figure out solutions to problems, or to help others figure out their own best practices or decisions.  Surrender, for me, means to continue learning, studying, engaging, showing hospitality, calling "bullshit" on obvious nonsense and making tough calls when decisions must be made.

Surrender is not escapism, but engagement.  Surrender is not fatalism, but recognizing that, in God, we were created to learn, grow and make differences in ways that display or use agape' (love and described by both the life of Jesus and First Corinthians 13:4-7.

"God, I surrender myself to you, 
 wholly and completely, 
 all that I am and all that I have,
 for you to use as you will, when you will, where you will and with whom you will.

 Take from me, Lord, 
 all that I withhold from you,
 all that I will not give you,
 and I am for you, against me self.

Not blind fatalism.  Never.  Willing LIVING, often at at the edge.

Try it.  Leave a comment with your experiences.