An Overcoming Surrender

Walking through valleys is dangerous. This treachery is not the dark places where we grope blindly for the next step. Rocky paths and narrow passageways in the low places fail to be the most dismal danger. Even loneliness that makes your soul ache with fever for companionship is not the deadliest force to battle.  

The danger is a reflection.

It’s you. It’s me.

It is us looking to ourselves in the mirror of self. We give into this fear of the unknown because confusing paths, tough terrain, and the hunger pangs that desire rescue are ravenous and unrelenting. The grief in these moments feels like drowning, and I do not know a human who loves to settle down in this place as their chosen real estate. So we do what we have to do. We power through in our own strength and hustle, or we drown ourselves in misery. We do not want to stay where it’s hard. It’s in our human nature to sink or swim. It’s not in our nature to demonstrate strength through surrender.

I have been walking through circumstances like this for five years. It has been arduous and at times it has been confusing. I do not like to sink, so my tendency has been to push. Hard.

I love how God chooses to speak in what seems, in my human mind, to be the strangest circumstances. I was in frenzied get it done mode one day: chores, phone calls, taking care of husband and kids, trying to find solutions to the many problems ailing our family topped with an extra scoop of exhaustion and anxiety. In the midst of pulling myself up by the bootstraps, I encountered a space of silence...His voice speaking to me:

“Your hustle has become bigger than your faith.”  

Yes, it had. I was hustling until I had bleeding knuckles like that is what God wanted from me.

We live in a culture where hustling has become a value to live by: Sleep when you die. Feel stuck? You have what it takes. Work hard. Things not going right for you? Must be your fault. Strive. Fight. Good things come to those that hustle. If things are not good, you are not hustling enough. Push. You can be a dragon slaying, million dollar maker who can work out like an Olympic champion all while maintaining serenity in your home and remembering to get eight hours of sleep because if you don’t, you may die of some horrible disease. if you just find that inner Viking warrior and kill it, you can conquer and vanquish every arrow with Matrix precision. If that does not work, find someone who is bleeding out just as much as you, who will sit in the muddy disaster of your life and sustain your appetite for agony by feeding you your right to a bad attitude. These friends tell you that you deserve to be a mess. After all, look at how messed up your life is.

The Bible is full of stories of overcomers. Biblical victory looks different than the way culture after culture up to the present perceive the highway to triumph. It does not look like muscle and grit. It does not stake the flag representing the isolated island of self into the ground and declare victory.  

No.

Instead, overcoming looks meek. It is strength that comes by leaning in to one who is stronger. It is might that does not boast or need to be put on display.

Overcoming looks like surrender.

Hannah was suffering. She longed for a child. In a time where not being able to have a child was seen as a curse, she was the object of scrutiny, scorn, and gossip over what sin she must have committed to deserve such a fate. She wept and wept. Her husband, Elkanah loved Hannah. He must have felt such sorrow for her. As Hannah grieved, Elkanah comforted her. But he did not allow her stay weighted down and drown in sorrow. With grace, he took her by the hand to the house of the Lord. He took her to the place where her tears mattered and where her groaning impacted the heart of the Father who hears. We all have choices like this when we suffer.  Do we take our pain to be swallowed up by God’s outrageous and healing love, or do we allow ourselves to be swallowed by our pain? Hannah chose surrender to the one who could fight for her, who could heal her, who heard her. And in due time, a son was born: a prophet, Samuel. God had heard, and He always does. Trusting Him through pain takes a level of faith in his goodness and his power that stretches us beyond the comfort of our own human nature. But in this place, we overcome with a heavenly victory that can only come with the decision to lay it down in the arms of Jesus.

The disciples were stunned by Jesus’ ability to sleep in a torrential storm. The rains and the wind were whipping around and through that wooden fishing boat with fury. The disciples had unified in common fear and had come to a solid consensus that they were all going to die. They were bonded in their mutual terror. In fact, they thought Jesus had lost his mind as he lay there taking a nap in the midst of it all. They shook Him awake with the cry, “We are all going to die!” It seems strange to think you are going to die when the Son of God is riding along in the storm with you. But we are not so unlike the disciples. We forget. We lose track of exactly who it is we love: The one who has sovereignty and might over every tornado life whips our way.  And our memory fails us when we begin to agree with the idea of isolation as if God has even left us, even in stormy times. The disciples were lacking the faith to believe that Jesus was not only able but willing to take care of them in a crisis situation. With a gentle rebuke over his pupils lack of faith, Jesus spoke peace into the storm, “Peace. Be still.” And the waves and the water obeyed just as the torrent in your life is subject to Jesus’ command to be silent.

You don’t have to pretend that you are not hurting. You don’t have to power through and make an idol of your own strength. You need not lay down dead in the dredges of depression thinking that God is no longer with you. It’s not what God wants. It’s not who you were created to be. You were made to get up and lean hard into the arms of your Father. You were made for fellowship with truth and not lies. You were made to be victorious. And your victory is not in the overcoming of self. It is in the laying down of self. It is trusting in Father God. Waiting. Though it may be scary or painful, still waiting, trusting in His goodness. This meekness comes with a promise: the inheritance of the earth. Psalm 33:7 says that the meek shall possess the land and delight themselves in abundant prosperity.  This is a brilliant picture of victory. It is not selfish, raiding conquest. This is victory through the laying down of fear and trust in the goodness of God. This victory is for the building of the Kingdom of God, trusted in the hands of those who patiently bask in his Glory, and though they may hurt, believing in His goodness.

In the hollow echo of pain, we can accept the report of the darkness and allow our light to be buried in a coffin made of lies. But here is the truth: there are no nails in the coffin of your life with Jesus. You do not have to suffer the hammer sealing your final fate. He took the nails in his hands, in his feet. He surrendered to death and overcame. And because of this, when you surrender to Him, you too overcome.