![By Jan Jacobsen (http://www.worldpeace.no/THE-WHITE-FLAG.htm) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://ericcase.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/1024px-white_flag.jpg)
By Jan Jacobsen (http://www.worldpeace.no/THE-WHITE-FLAG.htm) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Soul-work is hard.
Since my Sabbatical began, I’ve been going inside myself to see more, learn more, and ultimately heal more.
What I’m finding hasn’t been pretty.
For now, I’ll spare you most of the gory details, but this one thing has been coming up, over and over again. This one aspect of my life that, even though it is essentially Christianity 101, I have managed to radically lose sight of.
It’s the idea of surrender.
It’s the question of who is ultimately in control, not just of “my life” but of the pieces of my life as well.
Does that make sense?
Long ago, I’d bowed my head to the idea that my life is in God’s hands, but what I’m coming to terms with now is that even though I’d done that on a grand scale, on a day-to-day scale I still very much prefer to remain firmly in control.
And that wasn’t working anymore.
Right now, seemingly everywhere I look in my universe I see evidence of how I’m attempting to play God and stay firmly in control of people, situations, ideas, myself. When I can’t (because, um, I’m not God), it brings up such destructive thoughts and ideas.
I’ve really come to understand Paul’s words: “I’m a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse?” (Romans 7:24 CEB)
Fortunately, I’m also on the road to understanding the second half of that thought: “Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Even though I thought I’d gotten this a long time ago, I’m learning (again?) that the beginning of freedom and peace is to release of the idea that I control anything in the first place.
If I could, I could save myself.
My job is not to control anything—it’s to cultivate the deep presence of God within me, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Guess what #1: it feels like dying.
Guess what #2: dying is what we’re called to do in order to let Jesus live his life through us.
For me right now, the only anecdote to pathological control is to seek God ruthlessly each day and cast myself on Him.
I’m finding that this doesn’t occur in a shotgun prayer as I hurriedly get in my car.
It doesn’t happen between shots of espresso.
It doesn’t even necessarily happen in the moments of desperation when I’m careening off track.
It happens in slowness. Stillness. Purposeful silence. Prayer. Meditation.
Which is, I guess, the way it’s always been.
God is our refuge and strength,
a help always near in times of great trouble.
That’s why we won’t be afraid when the world falls apart,
when the mountains crumble into the center of the sea,
when the waters roar and rage,
when the mountains shake because of its surging waves.
There is a river whose streams gladden God’s city,
the holiest dwelling of the Most High.
God is in that city. It will never crumble.
God will help it when morning dawns.
Nations roar; kingdoms crumble.
God utters his voice; the earth melts.
The LORD of heavenly forces is with us!
The God of Jacob is our place of safety.
Come, see the LORD’s deeds,
what devastation he has imposed on the earth—
bringing wars to an end in every corner of the world,
breaking the bow and shattering the spear,
burning chariots with fire.
‘That’s enough!
Now know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations;
I am exalted throughout the world!’
The LORD of heavenly forces is with us!
The God of Jacob is our place of safety.
(Psalm 46)
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this is eric case 
soul-work is the worst, dude.
Thanks for these words. Working on surrendering some of my pieces as well!
I just finished “Mere Christianity” and I was struck in a new and fresh way what it was like for Jesus to be born a man. He didn’t only die His physical death that we remember; being God, EVERY waking moment involved Him being humbled from (or dying to) His Godly self.
Lewis says this: “And because the whole difficulty for us is that the natural life has to be, in a sense, ‘killed,’ He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn – poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being thus killed – killed every day in a sense – the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God. That is the whole point. For the first time we saw a real man. One tin soldier – real tin, just like the rest – had come fully and splendidly alive.”
We require such a surrender to more wholly understand the Spirit of God and to have that union with the “divine Son.”
Thanks for this reminder. This is something that’s been on my heart lately.