120 - How Do I Practice Daily Surrender?
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Surrender:
What surrender does not mean.
It does not mean defeat, as in you have been beaten.
It does not mean that you are through defeat establishing a peace treaty, as in you remain sovereign over your country, which is yourself.
It does not mean that you are giving up benefits and have to tolerate abuse.
What surrender does mean
It literally means, “to render over, or give way, for one’s own benefit”
It is a relinquishing of my attempt to control what I cannot control; from that standpoint, the “defeat” is the relinquishing of pride, denial of need for help, or actions that make my life unmanageable
Recovery from any kind of addiction has surrender as a key beneficial step:
A person first admits that they cannot control “life,” but they wish to live life
Surrender occurs when we seek a path, person, or process that can do this for us
surrender: “I cannot; therefore, I surrender to what God and others can do for me what I cannot do for myself”
God and surrender
Actions of surrender imply that a person is “rendering over” “giving back” or “returning” something that was taken from someone them or someone else. In emotional and spiritual surrender, we, as humans, are “giving back” to God what we “took” from Him.
We “stole” our hearts from God; we took our feelings, needs, desire, longings and hope and refused the dependency upon God that these inherent characteristics require.
We are created dependent, but will we remain vulnerable to using that dependency well or refuse to depend?
Surrender really is “re-depending” on God as the Source of primary connection, presence, and fulfillment.
We were born dependent and created to develop resilience in life and living through dependence.
God gave us:
Fear - so that we would ask for help
Hurt - so that we would seek healing
Sadness - to resolve loss through grief
When we surrender, we are returning to how God made us, with the ability to be:
connected to Him
present with Him
fulfilled by Him
This allows us to experience all the relational wonder that life has to offer. But we must be “good at dependency.” We must start with knowing our feelings and using them as they can be used for our benefit.
Rejection of and ignorance about surrender
When a person rejects or has been mistaught about surrender, they usually move from fear to anxiety quickly, instead of fear to asking for help or seeking wisdom.
“Fear of surrender” turns to “anxiety of doubt” when we doubt that help will actually help us or arrive on time.
Anxiety moves a person towards the need for control over their environment. On the other hand, “healthy control” of one’s environment is the healthy ability to make choices in the midst of life’s changes.
This kind of trust or surrender moves a person to be empowered IN their environment, without having to have or take control OF their environment.
Anxiety leads to control.
The loss of being able to control one’s environment eventually becomes rage.
The Blessing of Surrender
When we reconnect with God, rather than having to try to be our own gods, we gain 5 main benefits:
We are never alone because we have “re-discovered” God as real and active
We find that dependency empowers us rather than robbing us of power
We recognize and rely on dependency upon God and others to empower our resilience. Strength comes from dependency
We can trust results in daily life even when they are not what we had designed for ourselves. We do this because we trust that God “knows what He is doing” after we ourselves realized that we really didn’t know what was best for us
We no longer seek to escape life; we seek to live it more freely through relationships
Through surrender we yield (give way) and that produces a yield (harvest).
In God’s economy, surrender produces great benefits.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center
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