surrender on Trials

St. Anthony, the “father of monks,” is the best guide in our attempt to understand the role of solitude in ministry. Born around 251, Anthony was the son of Egyptian peasants. When he was about eighte...

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!”

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...

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 ...

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

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...

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

Eric Liddell, the “Flying Scotsman” was made famous by the 1981 movie Chariots of Fire . He was born to missionary parents in China in 1902 and educated in the United Kingdom. Though he made the Bri...

In her memoir, Confessions of a Good Christian Girl, Tammy describes the internal turmoil she experienced trying to be a good, rule-following Christian who had unexpectedly built an entire life arou...

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...

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...

True prayer happens at the intersection of surrender and celebration.

I am a bow on your hands, Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break?

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 ...

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...

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; ...

Atonement is secure when life is surrendered, released, set free for a new function…. When a sacrifice was offered, we should see it as a killing of the animal in place of the worshipper and the manip...

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...

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 ...

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...

Leader: Christ is risen! All: Christ is risen indeed! Leader: Light out of darkness! All: Life out of death! Leader: Hope out of despair! All: Power out of surrender! Leader: God, this is your g...

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...

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.

There are two wonderful Greek words that the early church theologians used to describe the Trinity: kenōsis and perichōrēsis. Kenosis is the act of self-giving for the good of another. It is found in ...

In Book Eight of Confessions , St. Augustine recounts how, in a state of deep inner turmoil, he “heard from a nearby house a voice, as of a boy or girl, I know not which, chanting repeatedly, ‘Ta...

The gospel is absurd and the life of Jesus is meaningless unless we believe that He lived, died, and rose again with but one purpose in mind: to make brand-new creation. Not to make people with better...

In the days of the early church, believers affirmed their faith by saying, “Jesus is Lord.” We give lip-service to that same affirmation, but find it difficult to surrender control of our lives. Inste...

The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way. (There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, f...

Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man...