Stepping into the Light

Recently I wrote an article called Faith is Like Marriage, which featured a revelation I received through Bradley Moore of Shrinking the Camel about surrender being more active than passive. Total surrender to God requires me to fully engage with God, freeing my faith in God’s plan for me.

I’ve reflected all week on this empowering idea of surrender leading to faith and, each time I do, the phrase “don’t be afraid of men and their faces” comes to me. Both Deuteronomy 1:17 and Jeremiah 1:8 tell us not to fear the faces of men, because God is our only judge.

Wondering what the Holy Spirit meant by reminding me of this admonishment in connection with the words “surrender and “faith,” I thought, “Of whose face have I been most afraid?” I’m as chicken as the average woman when it comes to standing out in a crowd, but I’m learning more and more to face crowds or individuals and say what needs to be said. I’ll stand up against anyone’s advice if it stands against God’s word.

Then I realized whose “face” has most threatened my faith. Who’s stopped me from fully engaging with God? It’s that gravity scarred woman in the mirror. She has never told me to shirk blood, sweat, and tears, but has mistakenly led me to think that those badges of hardship are separate from my life with God-elements of life to be overcome through prayer and good living, as if God’s love were all about comfort and not about the two of us living through pain together.

Faith is a wrestling match. Sometimes faith calls us to wrestle circumstances with a smile. More often, though, and far more challenging, comes the call to wrestle oneself out of the tendency toward self-serving reason. (I know the Bible says this, but I think…)

Surrender means to give up and turn oneself in to someone who has authority. Surrender says “Do with me what you will.” But surrender to God has to be more than that. Surrender to God is not just to turn myself in and say “Thy will be done.” If God wanted puppets, He’d have created puppets. He created humans with free will so our surrender would mean more than a succumbing to force. Surrender to God means to willingly become what God intended. But how?

Jacob, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham, could not surrender to God until he wrestled with God (Genesis 32:24-28). When God saw that Jacob would not give up and not let go of God, only then did God tell Jacob who he was-not the usurper or trickster (the meaning of the name Jacob), but a prince of God (the meaning of the name Israel). Jacob could not surrender to the identity God has created for him-Israel-until God told him he was Israel. And God could not tell Jacob anything until Jacob refused to let go of God. Their wrestling match brought this man the ultimate blessing: possession of God’s will for his life. Jacob was finally able to surrender to God’s will when he refused to surrender to anything else. He fully engaged with God in an all-night wrestling match, freeing himself to be who God intended. All Jacob’s life, he’d tried to trick his way to power, and had been good at it. But when he wrestled with God, having to let go of everything else in the process, God was finally able to let Jacob know he was a prince of God, more powerful than he had ever imagined.

My “face” has been telling me that wrestling God is too hard. Wouldn’t I rather be God’s pet than His project? Of course, but God doesn’t work that way. God has no favorites (Deuteronomy 10:17, Acts 10:34). Even Moses was forced to die outside the Promised Land, and David had to suffer for his sins. My faith won’t grow if I’m sitting around waiting for God to pat me on the head. I have to wrestle God until He tells me who I am. Then I can truly surrender.