surrender on Choices

How do you define what it means to “make a sacrifice?” We say we sacrifice for our family, or sacrifice for our careers. We speak of Jesus sacrificing himself so that we can experience eternal life. A...

Let me share one more lesson I am learning about daily surrender. It concerns the way we relate to others. Daily we encounter people who express views opposite to our own, hold values with which we ca...

God gives where he finds empty hands.

We sometimes imagine surrender to God as emotional starvation. Every pleasure feels suspicious, and every passion feels in competition with our love of God. We think that the more miserable we are in ...

Kate Bowler is a gifted scholar and writer who, as a young wife and mom, was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer—kept going six months at a time thanks to immunotherapy. She writes honestly about how ...

What we choose to fight is so tiny! What fights with us is so great! If only we would let ourselves be dominated as things do by some immense storm, we would become strong too, and not need...

Eternal God, lead me now out of the familiar setting of my doubts and fears, beyond my pride and my need to be secure into a strange and graceful ease with my true proportions and with yours; ...

I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.

Gracious God, We build walls to protect ourselves, but it leads to isolation. We make independence the highest value, instead of complete dependence on You. Forgive us for our inability to surrender e...

One of the greatest struggles we face in this life is the temptation to compare ourselves to others. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” But in the final part of ...

You have noticed, I expect, that Christ Himself sometimes describes the Christian way as very hard, sometimes as very easy. He says, “Take up your Cross”—in other words, it is like going to be beaten ...

A World in Chaos At the risk of sounding dramatic, both the U.S. and the world seem to be reaching a level of chaos unmatched since 9/11. The confusion and shifting loyalties, not to mention the 26,0...

When John Kavanaugh, who was a noted and famous ethicist, went to Calcutta, he was seeking Mother Teresa … and more. He went for three months to work at “the house of the dying” to find out how best h...

Heavenly Father, our Savior told us, "Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for My sake will gain it." These are hard words. We confess that we oft...

“A young man came to visit me with a question on his mind. He asked, “I prayed to receive Jesus as my Savior, but why has nothing really changed in my life?” I asked him, “Who is running your life?” H...

Sometimes trust takes time. We all love to be in control, but when you start to give some of that up, it's freeing. Start with some of the little things. Give those things up to the Lord.

Work and let him give the fruits therefore! Rule, and let him prosper it! Battle, and let him give victory! Preach, and let him make hearts devout!”

[The natural life] knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that.

Give up the struggle and the fight; relax in the omnipotence of the Lord Jesus; look up into His lovely face and as you behold Him, He will transform you into His likeness. You do the beholding--He do...

There is an old story of a king who went into the village streets to greet his subjects. A beggar sitting by the roadside eagerly held up his alms bowl, sure that the king would give handsomely. Inste...

When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...

Surrender—or “abandonment to divine providence,” as it is called in some of the older writings—is the central dynamic of the spiritual life, and retreat offers us many concrete opportunities for pract...

Maturation is a lifelong journey with different phases, human and spiritual. And it has many setbacks. What can be helpful is to have a grasp of the natural seasons of our lives and how these interfac...

The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self. The most difficult thing we have to manage is self. Our own daily living, our frames and feelings, our especial weaknesses and temptations, and ou...

One particularly crafty, if not insidious way a “good works” righteousness can seep into our theology is by positioning faith as the pre-eminent work. We must never forget that faith itself is a...

Taking up my "cross" means a life voluntarily surrendered to God.

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

King of kings and Lord of lords, today I am reminded of your preeminent sovereignty over all things, including me. Psalm 2 calls me to “kiss” you, to acknowledge your authority by submitting myself to...

There are many who say to the Lord, "I give myself wholly to Thee, without any reserve," but there are few who embrace the practice of this abandonment, which consists in receiving with a ce...

The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. What disturbs us in this world is not “trouble,” but ou...