Sweet Surrender
"There's a Spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me
My life is worth the livin', I don't need to see the end

Sweet, sweet surrender, live, live without care
Like a fish in the water, like a bird in the air."
- from a John Denver song

Sweet, sweet surrender...Lord, I can't live without you


Chapter 10 of The Purpose Driven Life is on surrender, one of the hardest elements of faith. We are called to surrender ourselves, our bodies and the souls contained within them, our will, everything that we are, to God.

Just as Christ poured himself out for us and made Himself an offering and an oblation, a sacrifice, he requires us to empty ourselves of ego, ambition, pride and all the "me" things that the world would have us focus on. It is in this dying to self, though, that we become alive in Christ. When I am so focused on Him that I lose my self-consciousness, that I lose my own will and desire to do His, then I am in the Kingdom of God.

That is the prize, so seldom attainable in the kingdom of earth. Self is the last stronghold, the hardest thing to yield to Christ. But I will continue to seek to do it -- I can't live without Him.

If You Ask

If You ask me only to wait, I'll be still.
If You ask me to tilt at windmills, I will.
Because You asked me to follow Your way,
I seek to so surrender my will each day
That if You ask me to follow You up a hill
to die, I will,
to live forever in You.
--Pat

Coming soon: radical Christianity