Spiritual Survival Guide
6: Keeping It Going: Moving Beyond Survival Mode
and encouragement of others. Listen carefully here: Hope just has to get born in us. It doesn’t have to be perfect. At this stage, hope just has to be able to say one thing: “I couldn’t, but God could.” And with that, we take the next step. Step Three: Surrender We stop procrastinating. We decide. We start turning it over to God. We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. In step three we finally stop procrastinating. We stop saying, “Of course I want to change, but just not quite yet.” In step three we make a decision, a conscious and deliberate step. At this point, it becomes a matter of the will. Consequences can force us to hit bottom. Consequences can force a nasty wake-up call against our will. But consequences can’t ever force us, against our will, to take this step of surrender. We have to take this step with our will. We’re standing at the door to a whole new way of life; do we have the willingness to turn the handle and step through? Are we ready to renounce our independence and make a declaration of dependence on God? Are we ready to stop playing God—and let God be God? Are we ready to turn over not just that one problem area that’s giving us fits but our very will and our whole life? Are we ready to take down all those “off limits” signs that we post for God? Because if we’re not, then we’re still back at step one—we’re still pursuing the fantasy of being in control. Step three asks us if we are ready to surrender, to risk it all, to trust, to hand over our will and our lives—and open ourselves up to becoming what St. Paul calls a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1). Are we ready to sur- render not once, but a thousand times a day? Are we ready to let God’s hands hold the controls, day and night—today, tomorrow and forever? This is true spirituality—a raw, gritty, life-or-death business, finding
God’s will and aligning ours with his, asking God to relieve us from our bondage to ourselves. This is true spirituality—to really say and pray in every situation, “Not my will, Lord, but your will be done.” We take this step by soaking ourselves in the truth of God’s Word, personally searching our own hearts in prayer, and leaning on others who are on the same path. Step Four: Courage We go deeper. We step up to the mirror. We face ourselves. We take inventory. We clean house. We make a “searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” The guys who started A.A. were businessmen, so they understood the importance of taking inventory. They said that there’s a huge difference between what you think you have and what you really have. They said sometimes the only thing you can do is get down into the basement and check the merchan- dise, piece by piece. What’s here? What’s missing? What’s good? What’s spoiled? Step four means no more fooling ourselves. No more vagueness. We step on a spiritual scale and see what it says. Step four means getting specific and doing some moral bookkeeping, some thorough spiritual housecleaning. It means sweeping a high-powered searchlight over our whole moral life: our thoughts, our feelings, our attitudes, our behaviors, our history with God and others.
It’s a pretty scary proposition, isn’t it? It means digging around down inside—down in the stuff we try to repress and would like to forget. That’s why it needs to be fearless, because we have to push through the scariness of the nasty stuff that has built up.
My “stuff” includes what I find so very ugly in others—jealousy, the need to be right, using people. —Dan
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