Just Another Manning Monday

Brennan Manning, inThe Importance of Being Foolish:

"But there is an essential difference between submission and surrender. The former is the conscious acceptance of reality. There is a superficial yielding, but tension continues...It is halfhearted acceptance. It is described by words such as resignation, compliance, acknowledgement, concession. There remains a feeling of reservation, a tug in the direction of non-acceptance. Surrender, on the other hand, is the moment when my forces of resistance cease to function, when I cannot help but respond to the call of the Spirit.

The ability to surrender is a gift of God. However eagerly we may desire it, however diligently we may strive to acquire it, surrender cannot be attained by personal endeavor."

So I pulled that quote (I haven't finished that book yet) in my research for Surrender this past week for yesterday's message.

I get what Manning is saying - and I agree, there is an aspect of giving in to God in which we "remain in control" of the giving in, and a giving in that is total, reckless abandon to God. I'm not sure that using submission is the best choice in light of how that word is used in the Bible (for example, James 4:7 says, "Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

Yet, maybe he's on to something. There's no doubt that when I submit, it is an act of will and the propensity is to hold back, to resent, to be (at least a little) unwilling. I have to MAKE myself submit. And maybe James is saying that - I'm still working this out - that it is an overt act of will and maybe God knows how incomplete that act of submission is...

But surrender - well, it IS different. It may very well involve an act of will - but, as Manning says above, "I cannot help but respond to the call of the Spirit." Surrender is God overwhelming us. Surrender is, he says, a gift from God. Nothing we can attain.

Yet...

Do we "work toward" surrender? I guess what I'm getting at is that acts of submission are probably steps on the path of surrender. Laying my life, my future, my family, my dreams, my lusts, my fears, my uncertainties, my everything down before God is an act of submission - I bend my will to God's. And in that, I surrender to God - or God...so overwhelms me that I am surrendered to God...

Working it out...

Oh, yeah, since this IS the inaugural post for Manning Monday, here's a link to the Bangles and Mann...uh, MANIC Monday...