Surrender

Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (book review)

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If you identify as one of these people, this book may be for you:

  • Contemplative
  • Meditative
  • Pursuing Spiritual Formation

Chances are the terms Centering Prayer or Welcoming Prayer are new to you. They were to me, which drew me to the book.

The first three sections of the book include 10 chapters teaching the method, tradition, and psychology of centering prayer.

The final section focuses on inner awakening and introduces welcoming prayer in chapter 13. That chapter by far was the most resourcing. This tool is meant to help surrender be an underlying attitude and practice for meeting daily life.

The welcoming prayer follows a three-step process:

  1. Focus and Sink In: Focus on how emotions or physical pain are being experienced in your body. Stay present without analyzing.
  2. Welcome: By welcoming the emotion or pain, you are not attempting to eliminate it but disarm it.
  3. Let Go: Two ways to go about this. 1) Short: “I let go of my anger,” or “I give my anger to God.” 2) Litany using the following formula: “I let go my desire for security and survival. I let go my desire for esteem and affection. I let go my desire for power and control. I let go my desire to change the situation.”

This quote sums it up quite well:

Here now, is the right place for you to wrestle before the divine face. If you remain firm, if you do not bend, you shall see and perceive great wonders. You will discover how Christ will storm the hell in you and will break your beasts. -Jacob Boehme

I don’t know about you, but I welcome the image and reality that the hell in me doesn’t have to be battled alone. I challenge you to try the welcoming prayer in the next 48 hours. Remain firm. Don’t bend. Welcome the beasts.

Try Softer (book review)

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I first heard of Aundi Kolber on an episode of The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill. But it wasn’t until I heard her book Try Softer mentioned on a different podcast that I took notice.

I finished the book today. It’s one of those that after you’re done you think, “I could have used that information a long time ago.”

You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.

Chapter 5, Boundaries Bring Us Life

Kolber is a licensed professional counselor in Colorado where she’s been practicing since 2009. In Try Softer, she utilizes her own trauma, training, research, Scripture, and client’s stories to illustrate what she means by trying softer. My paraphrase, trying softer is practicing gentleness through life rather than white knuckling it.

People who are aware of and know how to attend to their feelings are truly awake.

Chapter 8, Try Softer with Your Emotions

One of Kolber’s continued messages is to understand you and everyone around you is on a journey. She takes the first five chapters to examine that “process of becoming.” They include research about the brain, a look at the importance of early relationships, the value of boundaries, and a definition of your window of tolerance.

Research shows that taking longer to exhale than to inhale signals to our nervous systems that we are safe, stimulating the vagus nerve. Both help us stay in our window of tolerance.

Chapter 4, Too Hot, Too Cold…Just Right: Finding Your Window of Tolerance

Most of my highlights come for the final five chapters where Kolber offers ways to practice trying softer with your attention, body, emotions, internal critic, and resilience. All ten of the chapters end with exercises and questions to get you started in trying softer. If that sounds overwhelming, each time she reminds you to take your time with them, maybe even note them for later work.

It matters that leaders, parents, and pastors are aware of their own wounds and do their own emotional work.

Chapter 6, Try Softer with Your Attention

Many of us may get tense just thinking of the idea of trying softer. I think Kolber’s statements about surrender sum up how valuable this approach and mindset could be. In the final chapter on resilience, these two thoughts encourage us to take a step toward surrender.

This is what I mean when I talk about surrender: it’s feeling safe enough to release our grip…Paradoxically, when we choose surrender for the right reasons, it empowers us.

Chapter 10, Try Softer with Resilience

My spirit is boosted after reading Try Softer. I invite you to check it out and give yourself a boost to end the year.

Courage Musts

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Since he had turned his back upon the fight his fears had been wondrously magnified. Death about to thrust him between the shoulder blades was far more dreadful than death about to smite him between the eyes. When he thought of it later, he conceived the impression that it is better to view the appalling than to be merely within hearing. The noises of the battle were like stones; he believed himself liable to be crushed.

The Red Badge of Courage, chapter 6

To experience victory, hard must be faced.

To defeat fears, eyes must gaze forward.

To minimize dread, fight must be embraced.

To remain steadfast, battle must be accepted.

To resist surrender, better must be pursued.

To foster courage, will must be resolved.

Photo by Kat J on Unsplash

God’s…Not Mine…Mine (Part 3)

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I checked into an Airbnb in Dade City Monday. Across the road is this scene, a huge pasture with a lake.

Each morning I’ve driven downtown to get in my run. Tuesday morning when I returned, the pasture cows were having breakfast.

A couple of them paused to check me out. This one, I’ll call him Fred, was the most curious. He seemed a little bothered like, “Hey, human! What’s your problem? Can’t we eat without you people always staring at us?”

And that’s what Fred and I did-stared. It became a contest. Human won.

In my exercise work under the “Mine” column, I’ve come to a conclusion. I can be a lot like Fred. Chewing, wandering, mooing, doing whatever I want when someone comes along, mostly God, and interrupts. Gets my attention. Even calls me out. “How’s your responsibilities going?”

I’ve concluded that there is one thing that must top the list of mine-above my character, my integrity, my heart and soul. If I keep this one thing, it seems everything else on the list will fall into place. The top item is a surrendered will.

Freds can be stubborn, territorial, even proud. But eventually, they will surrender. And usually that comes in a moment of prayer. Consider these words from Paul David Tripp’s “Awe“:

The Lord’s prayer is a model for us. From “Our Father” to “your will be done,” the opening of this prayer presents a way of thinking, living, and approaching God inspired by awe of him. Only awe of him can define in you and me a true sense of what we actually need. So many of our prayers are self-centered grocery lists of personal cravings that have no bigger agenda than to make our lives a little more comfortable. They tend to treat God more as a personal shopper than a holy and wise Father-King. Such prayers forget God’s glory and long for a greater experience of the glories of the created world. They lack fear, reverence, wonder, and worship. They’re more like pulling up the divine shopping site than bowing our knees in adoration and worship. They are motivated more by awe of ourselves and our pleasures than by a heart-rattling, satisfaction-producing awe of the Redeemer to whom we are praying.

Christ’s model prayer follows the right order and stands as a model for our personal prayer. It’s only when my heart is captured by the awe of God that I will view my identity rightly. And it’s only when I view my identity rightly that I will have a proper sense of need and willingness to abandon my plan for the greater and more glorious plan of God.

So I guess I need to thank Fred. And do what’s mine, and only mine. Stay surrendered.

Is Prayer Bargaining with God…or Submitting to Him?

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(Day 18 in a 28-day series from First Bradenton)

“He willingly submitted to death.”- Isaiah 53:12b

“But please, not what I want. What do you want?”- Luke 22:42 (The Message)

Isaiah prophesied that the “Suffering Servant”, the Messiah, would have a submissive attitude in his death. Mark recorded the way Jesus fulfilled this as he prayed in Gethsemane, “Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.” – Mark 14:36. Not only did the Savior voice this prayer of submission; he acted on it. He had already said that he would give his life willingly. “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own.” John 10:18. He prayed in submission to His Father and acted in fulfillment.

We too, are to offer prayers of submission to our Heavenly Father. Sometimes we express these in song: “Have Thine Own Way, Lord,” “I Surrender All,” “Where You Lead Me, I will follow.” But in our hearts, we may be adding conditions: “as long as it fits my plans,” or “I surrender all except…,” or “if you don’t lead me out of my comfort zone.” Submission is not a bargain with God. It is Unconditional Surrender!

Why do we need to pray – and live – in submission? Many reasons come to mind: Jesus did, and I should too. He is God, and I am not. He has all power, and I am weak. He knows all things, and I am limited. He is sufficient, and I am not. His will and plan for me is perfect, and my will is often self-centered and stubborn. He is my Master, and I am his servant. All glory and praise belong to him – not to me.

We often think of submissive praying in the big matters of life. True, but he also deserves our commitment in everything. I learned this lesson again a few weeks ago. At 9:30 p.m., the thought came, “Where is my wallet?” After looking in the usual places, I realized that I had left it in the restaurant where we had celebrated my friend’s birthday some hours earlier. Credit cards, driver’s license, and more ran through my mind. I felt my anxiety growing, “what if I don’t find it?” I prayed that God would help me get it back. A phone call to the restaurant resulted in the manager’s words, “Sorry, I can’t find it.” Then it was as if the Lord’s voice came to me, “You have me. Am I not enough?” In submission I said, “Yes, Lord, you are enough. You are all that I need.” He calmed my spirit and made me realize that whether my wallet was found or not, it was okay, because he was in control. I went to bed and slept. At 11:30, I was awakened by a phone call, telling me that it had been found.

I received a more valuable lesson in trusting and submitting to Christ.

“Father, help me in all things to pray, and live, in submission to you. Amen.”

By Pat Browning

Fruity Fridays: Running to Do Good

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(A series about the Fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5)

Of the nine fruits of the Spirit, I’d guess this one to be the one most wrestled. 

Doing good is different from being good. You can be good on the inside. But to show the fruit of goodness it has to be seen, you have to do. That isn’t always easy. It’s downright challenging in many cases, on a regular basis.

  • It’s hard to do good to someone who views your decision as wrong.
  • It’s mind bending to do good to someone who intentionally undermines you.
  • It’s gut wrenching to do good for someone who knowingly lies about you.

These are examples that are difficult because they reveal where your power originates. If your power to handle wrong, undermining, and lying lies only in you, you will be less likely to do good.
No, we have to rely on a better source of power than ourselves. That power comes from the model of goodness. That model and power is described in Acts 10:38.

God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.

Instead of looking at yourself to muster the power of goodness, we must look to the Holy Spirit. No matter how hard the situation, he has the power to do good through you. So how do we look to the Holy Spirit?

  1. Work through your anger, jealousy, selfishness, etc., before responding. (HINT: This may take more than five minutes.) Start doing good by not doing wrong by allowing destructive emotions to control you.
  2. Pray to the Holy Spirit. Ask Him what goodness will look like in your situation, for that person. Only move when you have peace and commitment to the action.
  3. Practice, Practice, Practice. You only get better at something by doing it. Start with a simple good thing that you know the Holy Spirit wants you to do. Example: Pray that God would bless your offender rather than praying God would convict them. (HINT: Conviction isn’t our job.) A staggering baby step like this will lead to steady walking which will lead to strong running.

Running isn’t easy. Certainly not to do goodness. Surrender to the Holy Spirit to help you run to do good.