Surrendering to Love is Repelling - Are You Strong Enough to Fall?

Have you ever been rock climbing?  I love it.  The ache you feel in your fingers as you strain for the next ledge challenges your limits. 

Your forearms burn as you support your entire body weight while struggling to latch your toenails to a secure nook.

And all of that while battling the fear of dangling some thirty to forty feet above the unforgiving ground. 

When you get to the top, though, my goodness.  The sense of reward you feel when you slap the top of the wall is remarkable. 

Until. 

You realize that you have to get back down.  Hopefully, in one piece. 

Do you know how you get back to level ground?  You can’t really climb down. 

You gotta repel down. 

The first time you repel down a rock wall…shoot.  That’s a whole different kind of challenge!  It’s almost entirely mental. 

You have to completely place the entire weight of your body on the harness – and fall. 

You must trust that the harness will hold you, the ropes will support you, and all of the other mechanisms involved will be fully reliable as you gently descend back to the ground.

Embrace the Divine Conspiracy

Repelling comes so, so close to capturing the essence of the Christian faith.    This can be hard for some to embrace, but the Christian faith is far more about surrendering than striving. 

• It’s not going up, it’s going down. 

• It’s not getting high; it’s going low. 

Being filled with the Spirit of God means being emptied of your false self.  

A loving relationship with God is far more like repelling down the walls we’ve built up rather than striving to reach the top. 

We cannot live the life we long for without surrendering to the God who is love. 

Surrendering to Love Requires Taking a Massive Risk

Let’s get this on the table immediately.  Choosing love – and risking allowing yourself to be loved – is a dangerous game. 

Long before Taylor Swift vowed to never ever get back together, Jon Bon Jovi lamented love getting a bad name.  Before that, the great Hank Williams Sr. wailed over a cheating heart. 

Dave Matthews was absolutely right when he said that someone else’s broken heart becomes your favorite song. 

Art, film, music – life – is like a mosaic comprised of the shrapnel from the shattered hearts of those who dared to love. 

In every way. Not just romantically. 

Children’s hearts have been devastated by the destructive decisions of their parents. 

How many of us unsupervised Gen-Xers or Millennials were violated with no adults to intervene?  “Sibling rivalry” or “boys being boys” has left scars on souls that are crying for restoration. 

If only the pain of risking love was limited to people doing terrible things.  But there’s also the disproportionate and unpredictable pain of living in a cursed world.   

• Cancer. 

• Disease. 

• Infertility. 

• Natural disasters. 

CS Lewis captured the challenge of love so well when he wrote:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable…”  

The Heart of Life is the Love of God

Let’s embrace reality and not pretend that any of us have all of this perfectly figured out, much less lived out.  We see within us and around us so many reasons to guard our hearts from love. 

And yet. 

We ache for it.  We compromise for it.  We get suckered into all kinds of counterfeits because we want to feel loved.  We can strive for it.      

Trying not to give love can feel like clogging Old Faithful – it’s going to just burst out at some point. 

We Need Love 

We need to receive and give love.  If I may be so bold, I would suggest that we even need to enjoy watching others give and receive love. 

So, what do we do with this dilemma? 

• Pretend these longings aren’t there? 

• Risk opening the drawbridge to our hearts? 

• Work hard to not only prove we are worthy of love – but also – protect ourselves from being hurt by what and who we love? 

We must do something.  Just like we must eat.  It’s how we’re created. 

This is what makes the full gospel of King Jesus such incredibly good news.  In God we are found by true, safe, invigorating, healing, self-giving, pure love.     

And if you will dare to risk believing this – you can’t earn it.  Or lose it.  But you can fully receive it, surrender to it, and have your life shaped and healed by Love. 

Surrender to the God who is Love

1 John 4:16 makes it abundantly clear that God is love.  Falling in love with God is the essence not only of Christianity but of life itself. 

This is not an overstatement. 

It’s an invitation to have our deepest, most intimate, vulnerable desires and needs fully satisfied in God. 

Love is the very nature of God’s Triune being.  The purest love is always others-focused without being narcissistic, smothering, or obsessive. 

• If God were a solitary being, then His love would be narcissistic and needy. 

• If He were a dualistic being, then His love could be excluding and obsessive.

But as a Triune being – Father, Son, and Spirit - love dances in delight into, through, around, and overflowing from the core of who God is, pouring out onto all of creation.  Including you. 

Enjoy True Love

True love cannot be earned; it can only be received.  Unless true, pure love is freely received, it’s somehow incomplete.  Or perhaps tainted. 

Unless God’s love is received in the tender places of our souls, it won’t have the transformative effect that God promises and that we desperately desire.

This is what sets Christianity apart from every worldview, philosophy, and religion on the planet. 

Following Jesus isn’t just one option among many lifestyle choices.  It’s an entirely different way of experiencing life. 

God will not back down on this.  He is love.  Nothing less.  The rest of His attributes are filtered through love. 

Surrendering to the Love Inside You

Check this out.  Love is the core of YOUR truest, purest identity.  God is love, and He created you in His image.  Me too. 

That means that the deepest, most substantial aspect of our true self is love. 

Now we’re getting somewhere. 

For all the different roles we play in the world (parent, sibling, boss, employee, etc.), all the different gifts and strengths we have to offer, all the healing we cry out for – all of it – finds its fulfillment in, to, through, and for love. 

This is the substance of life.  None of it is entirely safe apart from the love of the God who is love: Jesus. 

And the only way to access this love is by surrendering to it.  Not striving for it. 

Look at Life through Lenses of Love

If we surrender to this truth, it will increasingly transform us in the best possible ways.  It’s like Snow White being woken up by true love’s kiss.  Or Neo realizing how to move through The Matrix. 

Stay with me. 

God is love.  We’re created in God’s image.  Therefore, the core of who we are is also love. 

So why is it so hard to experience and express love freely?  Why do broken hearts seem so much more common than happily ever afters? 

Understand the Heart of Sin

This is what the Bible refers to as “sin.”  Sin is not breaking a rule – even God’s rules.  Sin is not failing to live up to a moral code – even a universally accepted one. 

Sin is breaking relationship with God.  It’s breaking His heart. 

The Biblical authors, struggling to find human language that matches the devastation that sin is, often describe sin as spiritual adultery.

Our weak and wounded hearts get seduced by the false promises of cruel lovers.  We wander from our first love, believing that a career will provide what God can’t.  Or won’t. 

We expect our spouses, pastors, and politicians to perform perfectly for us when only God’s unconditional, limitless love can. 

In our desperation to find healing for ways we’ve been traumatized and victimized, we compromise our integrity to be accepted by someone – anyone – when Jesus’ arms are always so wide open. 

It’s a cruel trick from a cosmic enemy to deceive us into believing that what God wants is for us to follow some rules and that we somehow get closer to God by getting better at not being bad. 

Bought Back into Relationship Through Love

How does this gap get covered?  There is only one way.  You know what it is. 

If you’re willing to take an emotional risk, consider what you want from someone who has broken your heart. 

You want vulnerability.  Humility.  No pretense, BS, self-justification, or blame-shifting, right?  You want them to feel remorse for the harm they have caused you. 

And if they approached you with this posture, asking for your forgiveness – knowing full well they don’t deserve it – how would you respond? 

Most of us, on our good days, long for reconciliation.  We long for relationships to be mended, guards to drop, and love and joy to be restored. 

And yet, we know, we feel deeply within our bones that there is a need for justice.  Sure, we can forgive.  But forgiveness is never free.  It is always costly for the victim. 

Hear the Good News of Truth and Love, Justice and Mercy

Here is what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ such a mind-blowing, powerful, healing, transforming reality. 

Our sin – all sin – is ultimately a betrayal of God’s faithful love.  Jesus, Love in the flesh, came to this world, took on humanity, and lived the life of perfect love that we should. 

He loved God.  He loved people. 

Perfectly. 

We wandered away from God – and Jesus chased us down to win our hearts back with God’s love. 

But not only this, He suffered the consequences of our spiritual adultery.  He died on the cross in our place so that God could forgive us – and – fulfill the demands of justice. 

For us – and for everyone who has violated our love for them. 

God is True, Pure Love

It’s not like Jesus is the nice part of God and God the Father is the angry ogre that Jesus saves us from.  No. 

God, in all His mysterious Triune majesty, did everything necessary to pour out His love and fulfill all of love’s demands – including justice. 

Receiving this proposal of love, the gospel, is what awakens true love in our hearts.  Increasingly surrendering to this love in every area of our lives is how we grow in love.    

Hiding Behind Glory

If all of this is true, if this is who God is, what Jesus has done, what the gospel awakens in us – then why do I say that we need to surrender to it? 

It sounds like something far better than a fairy tale ending, right?  Who wouldn’t want to love and be loved fully, freely, and safely? 

Us.  Me.  For love to be true, pure, and potent, it must be offered and received in vulnerability and freedom. 

As soon as there are any strings attached, love becomes something less than love. 

Many find it safer emotionally to worship, fear, serve, study, and even obey God than to love Him, let alone be loved by Him. 

Many of us try to protect our vulnerabilities and keep God at arm’s length by glorifying Him rather than loving Him. 

There is obviously an overlap and nuance here.  But the emotional distinction is essential.  The fruit that’s produced could not be more opposed. 

As Jesus warned, people can honor Him with their lips while keeping their hearts far from Him.   

It’s the difference between a prostitute weeping over Jesus’ feet, washing them with her hair – and the Pharisee standing over them both in judgment.

Which position do you find easier to enter emotionally?  Publicly?  Spiritually?

Isn’t it easier to stand on the sidelines, critiquing and condemning, than to lay yourself bare at Jesus’ feet, being completely unguarded in His presence, fully entrusting all of who you are to Him? 

We Can Trust God’s Patient Love

God is so good, so kind, so patient.  He knows how hard this is for us.  He doesn’t even condemn us for this! 

He patiently, persistently pursues us with His perfect love and drives every fear out of our hearts that keeps us from enjoying His love.  

All we can do is surrender to this.  God will not let us settle for knowing Him as:

• A distant absentee landlord

• A fascinating subject to study

• An authority figure who barely tolerates you

• A holy deity to be afraid of

• A nebulous, universal force

• A cosmic vending machine to manipulate

God will be known, cherished, enjoyed, and adored as a Triune Person – in, through, to, and for love. 

We can only surrender to His love.  We must repel, not climb.  Repelling is far easier than climbing.  But it’s far more mentally and emotionally challenging. 

At first. 

Eventually, once you realize the harness is trustworthy – that God’s love is trustworthy – surrendering to love becomes a source of delight and fulfillment that nothing on earth can compare to. 

With practice, we grow in the confidence we need to let the love of God heal and transform the deepest, most intimate, and most vulnerable places in our souls. 

Surrendering all of who we are to Love all of Who God is

It can happen in a flash.  Or it can be a slow awakening.  At some point, though, God’s love will gently peel back the layers of self-protection and promotion we’ve plastered over our hearts. 

When He does, when we open our hands and hearts to His love, we experience the fulfillment of the ancient promises of the Scriptures. 

Our hearts begin to beat with flesh where they were previously covered with stone. 

For some, this is opening our hearts to letting God see the depths of our shame. 

For others, it’s inviting God into places of victimization.  For some, God will invite them to open their hands so God can have access to their dreams, hopes, and longings. 

Regardless, the Holy Spirit will touch the tender places in our souls so that we can surrender them to the transforming power of His love. 

There is no formula for this.  It’s an intimate, personal, dynamic interaction between you and God. 

It’s what you long for.  It’s what He so eagerly desires to give you.  It’s what the world craves. 

Surrendering to God’s Love is the Foundation of Life

Surrendering to God’s love is drinking the living water that wells up to eternal life.  It’s the treasure buried in a field that would make you sell everything so you can have it.  It’s the light yolk and easy burden Jesus invites us to take on. 

Love is the lens through which God views the world.  It’s the disposition with which He approaches us.  It’s the life He’s designed us to enjoy.  It is better to spend one day at the gates of His love than a thousand elsewhere. 

No one and nothing compares to experiencing the love of God.  It’s heaven.  On earth.  Because God is love – and God is here.