I shall never surrender!

“We shall never surrender!” So said Winston Churchill in his famous We Will Fight on the Beaches speech. The implication is that if you don’t surrender, you have only one choice, and that is to keep on fighting. But I have a problem with that. Is surrender the only alternative to fighting? What about love? Both surrender and love stand against fighting. But when we surrender, it’s because we have no choice. Love is always a choice.

Many people will say that the key to following God's will for your life is surrendering your own will to God's. As someone who has spent most of my adult life battling with God, I can tell you that approach may work for some people, but it doesn’t cut it for me.

Surrender is the language of war. When you surrender, you resign yourself to the fact that you've been beaten, or at least you aren't going to win, so you throw in the towel. In surrender, you come to the other defeated. And it’s pretty hard not to resent someone you have surrendered yourself to. You may continue to want the same things for yourself that you always wanted, but now you're forced to deny them and the resentment grows deeper.

Doesn’t God want to be in a loving relationship with us? How can you love someone to whom you have surrendered yourself like that? When I strive to follow God's will for my life, the real point for me has become, do I love God? If I love God, then I want what God wants. It's not a matter of doing battle with God and surrendering my will to God's will. It's about making God's will my will, too.

Have you ever watched two people who professed to love one another for the rest of their lives grow to become adversaries? Every issue between them becomes a battle of the wills and there is an ongoing struggle to see who will ultimately win the war. But when you love someone, you want what they want, don't you? If the one you love wants to watch a football game on Sunday afternoon, you don't dig in your heels and refuse to allow it. You want them to have what they want. You want them to be happy and their happiness makes you happy, too. Your will becomes the same.

That’s how my relationship with God works as well. God isn't the enemy. God doesn't want to do battle with me. God doesn't force me into submitting to him and seeing things his way. God loves me. And God wants me to love him so much that I want what he wants for me.

There is a huge difference between surrendering myself to God and giving myself to him in love. One approach feels like a requirement and I come to resent it. But when I respond in love, I’m offering myself as an expression of thankfulness for a gift beyond compare. And there isn’t a speck of resentment in me. Only joy.

Living One Block Over

There’s a quirky short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne about a man named Wakefield. One day Wakefield wakes up and decides to take a little break from his wife and home in London and rents out a room one block over. He doesn’t tell his wife and intends to stay away only for a day or two. But then the days go on and he watches his wife from a distance for twenty years. Never once does he let her know where he is or even that he is alive. For twenty years. The story ends when one day Wakefield is out walking down the street and he suddenly decides to return home; we see him entering the door to his house as if he had never left.

How many of us have a relationship with God like that? One day we slip away and we think it’s just a short break from the relationship, but the years pass and it’s as if we’re watching God from one street over. Now, by this, I’m not talking necessarily about people who have strayed away from the church. Because the church and God are not the same thing. I’m talking about anyone who has removed themselves from the loving relationship God offers. It can happen for people inside the church as easily as it can for those outside the church. I do hope those of us who are inside the church are there because we want to grow in our relationship with God. I hope we're opening ourselves to the love of God that fills us to overflowing and spills out onto other people who also want to grow in their relationship with the God of love.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m in a loving relationship with someone and that relationship is in balance, I can feel it. When it’s out of whack, I can feel that too. I suspect that we also know when our relationship is in balance with God, or when it’s out of whack. One way to tell is if following Christ’s commandment to love one another as he has loved us is a burden for us or if it just comes naturally. After all, when you’re in a loving relationship with someone, you want what they want. If Christ wants us to love one another as he has loved us, it’s what we want too. It’s not a huge struggle for us; it’s something that we willingly do. We may not be perfect at loving the way Christ does, but there is no question that we’re not resisting it. What Christ wants for us is the same thing we want for ourselves.

It’s tempting to become like Wakefield and say, "You know, maybe someday I’ll go home, maybe someday I’ll be in a relationship with God," and then the days and the years pass. Of course, Wakefield did go home in the end. We don’t know if his wife was like the waiting father in the story of the prodigal son or not, but we do know that that’s how our God is. He’s always waiting for us to come to our senses and find our way back to him. But in the meanwhile, how much are we missing? Wakefield missed out on 20 years of his life because he was a stubborn old fool. God’s love is all around us. May we have enough sense to open our hearts and let it in.