Embracing Surrender: Finding Peace in Faith

"And when he does not get what he wants, when he doesn't get his way, he loses it. And we're crate training him, you know, especially at night because we don't want to wake up in the morning and our house be completely destroyed. So we're crate training him at night. And those first few nights, that didn't go too well. I mean, it's like just screaming and wailing. And our neighbors probably thought like, dude, what is going on? It's Halloween. Like they're doing some weird stuff over there. And it was just our puppy literally losing its mind. And in one of these nights, while I was lying there listening to the wailings of a puppy, I realized in my, I just want sleep brain, that this puppy is living out a perfect picture of humanity. Like right, right then in that moment. When we don't get our way, we have a problem with that. Now we may not scream and cry like a puppy who doesn't want to be in a crate, but we have our own way of showing" [00:00:39] (55 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"This my way or the highway life we live, it gets even more complicated when we throw faith into the conversation. When we mix in spirituality with the desire to control. And when we do this as we are trying to control, we're not going to be able to control. We're not going to be able to control. We're trying to follow Jesus with our lives. It gets complex. How do we follow Jesus in his ways over our own ways? What does that even look like. And scripture is full of people who struggled with this." [00:02:41] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"People who doubted God on their journey. People who had doubts with their faith or they had idols in their lives, things that they put above God in their life. They constantly disobeyed God or they went their own way. And yet they were still chosen by God all throughout scripture. They're the prophets and priests, men and women of strong faith, even when their faith was not perfect. And a lot of times, if we're really honest with ourselves, that can make us uncomfortable. It makes us uncomfortable to think about the people in scripture who had doubts, who struggled, who disobeyed God. We think that in life we cannot have struggles and faith at the same time. But life is nothing but struggles. And faith is the choice we always make and come back to. And faith is the choice we always make and come back to. And faith is the choice we come back to in the midst of our struggles." [00:03:11] (52 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"And Jesus's response to that is he tells the people, go back and tell John all the things you've seen and heard. And then Jesus turns to the people, to the crowd, and he proceeds to tell them nobody is greater than John. No one who has ever lived is greater than John, even in the middle of his doubt. The point is, when we are following Jesus, it is a journey of complexities. There are highs and lows, moments of great faith and moments of confusing doubt. But what is beautiful to me is that in all of our inconsistencies, God always remains consistent." [00:05:35] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"Maybe you're here today and you're following the ways of Jesus, but you wrestle with exactly what that means. Or maybe you're here and you're following whatever you think is best. It's like, what are my intentions? What's my best way of doing this? And you're following that. Maybe it just sometimes leaves you empty. Maybe you're here and there are moments of faith mixed with moments of doubt. Or maybe you're just in all those categories. I know at times I can find myself with nothing but inconsistencies." [00:06:32] (31 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"And really wanting control is at the root of everything in our lives. If we're honest with ourselves, we want to control. We want to control our surroundings. We want to control our relationships. We want to control our lives. And when we don't feel in control, anxiety creeps in. Fear shows up. But when it comes to faith, when it comes to following Christ, this is why it is so difficult because you are giving up. You are giving up. You are giving up. You are giving up. You are giving up that control." [00:07:15] (26 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"Because a lot of what we're talking about in general through Jonah is life. It's storms. It's struggles. Doing things our way. And a big theme that we see over and again in this book, literally and metaphorically, is this, that life our way keeps us in the storm. But life God's way will always rescue us out of the storm. Living life our way, it keeps us in the storm. But life God's way rescues us out of it. And we'll see that through Jonah's story." [00:08:42] (30 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"Fearing for their lives, the desperate sailors shouted to their gods for help and threw the cargo overboard to lighten the ship. But all this time, Jonah was sound asleep down in the hold. So the captain went down after him. How can you sleep at a time like this? He shouted. Get up and pray to your God. Maybe he will pay attention to us and spare our lives. I think all of us in this room at some point in our life, maybe now, maybe in the past, maybe in the future, all of us in this room are either Jonah or the sailors at some point in life. And a lot of times we're not going to know which one we are until we're in the middle of a storm and we see how we're acting in our response. Then we figure out which one that we are. And then we figure out which one that we are. And then we figure out which one that we are. But let's take the sailors first." [00:09:55] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"Instead, so instead of throwing Jonah overboard like he told him to, the sailors rode even harder to get the ship to the land. But the stormy sea. It was too violent for them. And they couldn't make it. Then they cried out to the Lord, Jonah's God. So back to present day for a moment. In your storm, when you find yourself in a difficult moment, in a difficult season, when life's hard, do you find yourself just rowing harder and harder? You're just rowing and rowing and rowing and rowing and doing everything you can do. What can I do? How can I work harder? How can I do this? And it's me, me, me, me, me. How can I get out? How can I get out of this out of my own power? The problem is, though, is you're caught in the undertow." [00:14:55] (44 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"And this says the sailors were awestruck by the Lord's great power. And then they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him. Immediately the storm stops. And when it did, they offer sacrifices to God. They surrendered their ways of doing things over to God. They tried it all themselves and nothing ever worked. They were at the end of their rope, and they realized it's actually, it might be the end of my rope, but God is right there, and his hand is just right there waiting for me to grab onto. That's what they realized in that moment. They gave up control. They surrendered, and they made it through the storm. They were awestruck by God. I love that word. They were just in awe, so much so that they offered him a sacrifice and vowed to serve him." [00:16:50] (47 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


"Jonah comes to this point where he surrenders everything back over to God. He has this prayer moment literally at his last moment. He's like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. He's knocking on death's door, a prayer moment of surrender. And then he has a choice to praise and a choice to obey. So he prays to God and then he chooses to praise God and then he chooses to obey God. He says, I will fulfill all my vows. Like there is a little bit of hope there. He's like, God, maybe you still can't rescue me. I will obey you, God. Those are two very important choices that have to happen, usually when we do not want them to happen." [00:23:15] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)