Utter Surrender

So here I am sitting, sipping my green tea and reading through the pages of Jeremiah. Until this point in my life I always thought that prayer, although important, seemed to be a gift to some and not to others. While I fell in the latter category, I woke up this morning with the urge to learn how to pray. Low and behold, it seems I found out that prayer, while a gift, is something every Christian ought to seek to do. A quick glance over the classics on prayer will display the importance of the discipline. This prayer is not confined to closing your eyes and folding your hands, or even declaring healing, but rather a life of prayer. As God unveiled this revelation to me, it seemed a tsunami wave hit me in the face – I cannot even focus for five minutes, how can I live a life of prayer? Doesn’t God know that prayer is not my gift? I don’t even understand prayer, yet, we are all called to be prayer warriors. My mind runs in circles in a vain attempt to comprehend prayer, and why some seem to “get it” and I definitely don’t. BUT I am called to do it. So this particular morning I embarked on my prayer journey, hoping beyond hope that God could make something beautiful out of my intentions. My prayer – simply for God to teach me how to pray.

In reading Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline,  he made the revolutionary observation that when praying for others the disciples never said “if thy will be done.” The reason being, the disciples drenched themselves so much into God’s will that they knew what God wanted them to do. So I have embarked upon the journey to having this kind of faith – being in this deep, unadulterated, communion with God.

It did not take long on this prayer journey, actually all of five minutes, to realize all of my efforts are vain. There is absolutely no action I as a human can take to bring me closer to God because my flesh always gets in the way. The only thing I can do is surrender – surrender, what a word. It is at this point my meditations turned to realization of my futile efforts. You see I, as I presume many others do, udder “Lord I surrender” as I am drifting off to sleep, or barely waking up in the morning. While I say I surrender, do I truly seek it? You see, the truth is that to truly surrender, pray, or know God’s will we have to stop. Stop our flesh – completely die to ourselves and let God work a miracle in ourselves. I think this is the greatest miracle God ever works –greater than igniting wood drenched in water, or making a burning bush talk. This miracle takes something like me, rotten through and through, and completely changes it to be whiter than snow.

While it appears we should sink into depression over our lack of ability to do anything right, it is just at that point of humility God steps in and says this is what I have been waiting for – for you to step aside. Not to utter the words I surrender, but to truly remove yourself so you can have divine surrender and divine communion. What a revelation – something taught time and time again through millennia, yet so hard to grasp.

I truly think God looks at me sometimes in bewilderment and says what in the world are you doing?? I made you and I can’t even figure you out – don’t you know what I could do if you would just stop and listen to me?? Yet somehow, even though I can’t make myself worthy, God steps in and covers me, but this only happens when I fall utterly abandoned, humbled, and willing at the foot of my savior with an un-quenchable thirst for divinely inspired surrender.