a surrender - 71

(Continuing "a surrender", chapter nine, "God doesn't need our help") 

Looking back over the years since I walked away from the Navy, I’ve noticed something strange. Again and again, when I had been narrowly rescued from disaster, it turned out that the people involved were not trying to help me at all. They weren’t the ones rescuing me. The Navy lawyers were just trying to avoid the cost and negative publicity of a trial. And I was set free. The person who called the police was just trying to get rid of a homeless guy. And I ended up in a warm bed. The board of the campground was just saying no to a project that was too costly. And Heather and I, and our three-year-old child, kept our home. The new owners just found it simpler and easier to offer free housing to dedicated volunteers. And we were able to continue to “freely give” as Jesus taught us. 

When I thought I had to come up with a plan to save our life on the farm, I pushed my idea feverishly. But God didn’t need my help. When the new owners were being advised to send our family away, I didn’t even know it was happening. But that didn’t matter. Because God didn’t need my help.

It is said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. I entered the Navy with thoughts like that in mind. And burned myself out working in a homeless shelter, thinking the same thing. But, to be honest, I didn’t find the people in the fight against evil to be particularly good, myself included. What I found instead was that the fight against evil justified a lot of things that, it seemed to me, could also be called evil. But this failure also doesn’t matter. Because whether evil triumphs or not is not going to be determined by us. God stops evil, often through circumstances and people who know nothing of what they are doing, or even by turning one evil against another. God doesn’t need our help.

God wants us, yes. But not for our labor. God doesn’t need a workforce. God doesn’t need an army. God doesn’t need our help. God wants us, but not for what we can do. God just wants us—for us. There is nothing we can offer God, but ourselves.

That’s what faith is. A surrender of ourselves.

It takes no strength at all. It is a surrender in weakness, when we despair of our strength. It takes no effort, because it is the end of effort, the end of pushing, the end of struggling. Surrender is the end of what we can do, and the beginning of what God can do.

And what God can do is love. The power of God is the power of love. It is the inspiration and the energy for every good thing, every good word, every good action. It connects every person who loves, and makes them one family, one body. It owns everything and can provide anything, because, when love inspires it, any thing owned by any person can be given. As a free gift. Love is a power that cannot be bought or stolen or used for evil. It is a power without limit and without end.

And it is a power that is made perfect in weakness.

Continued...