The 52 members of K-Squad are currently in the midst of wrapping up a Leadership Development Weekend (LDW) and have come together to reflect on the month and look forward as a squad to what the Lord has for us in Ghana. We’ve come together for the first time since arriving in the Ivory Coast to share what has happened in and through the various teams, worship together as a squad, and come alongside each other in encouragement.
Our Squad Leaders, Courtney and Jamie, told us during our first session that when they had prayed about LDW for K-Squad, God gave them a word for us: surrender.
The word resonated with me and confirmed something God had just told me in the worship session that had come before the squad session. As I was declaring God’s goodness, I realized I was no longer speaking that over the same things. Before, at Training Camp, I had felt the need to declare God’s goodness in my fundraising and over parts of my life I felt hadn’t been made good yet. Now, though, I found that I was thinking about how He’s good in whatever the future holds right now.
And I wasn’t thinking about my big-picture future (that’s a whole different animal that the Lord and I will tackle together), but I was surrendering the different ways I filter, process, and try to control because I already know His goodness in my future is secure. Specifically, I realized that I can feel all the things without fear of what feelings and messiness will mean for me later. If I’m messy and weird in the moment, it’s okay because God will put it together perfectly. Generally, I like to withdraw and put all the messy pieces together into a neat, logical presentation without inviting anyone into my process—but I surrendered that process and the safety I thought it brings so that I could pursue vulnerability with God and with others. In the surrender, I was believing that I could feel everything without worrying about how I would need to put it back together.
I told my team that night that I wanted to really feel feelings in the moment, and feel myself while doing so.
The next morning, what started in the session as a space for prayer requests turned into an hour and a half of prayer as a squad—we surrendered that morning and the LDW plans that had been made for the morning session as we laid hands on and gathered around each other. We prayed for and alongside each other’s families and friends for healing as more and more people shared stories and hope.
And you know what? I freaking cried through the whole dang thing.
I couldn’t control or understand it; all I knew was that I felt so spiritually full in being able to shoulder my squadmates’ burdens and bring them to the Lord with them. I didn’t feel awkward or uncontrollable in crying—I felt more like myself in my empathy.
It felt so good to surrender. I felt so free. I felt more “myself”, but more importantly, I felt more able to serve from that position of surrender.
The night before, my squadmate, Pat, had said it simply: “Sometimes, you have to choose surrender. I rarely “feel like” surrendering, but I know it’s what God asks, so I have to choose it.” And when he’d said that, I was transported back to a time and place when it didn’t feel good to surrender.
It was October 2014, and I was kneeling/bent over on the floor of my dorm room, sobbing and begging the Lord not to ask me to surrender. I wanted to fight surrender with everything in me.
“I love everything about this, please don’t take this from me.”
God was asking me to surrender the relationship that I had with a young man that wasn’t a Christian. Surrendering this relationship would mean so much loss for so many people. It would mean hurt. It meant giving up the future I thought I’d had figured out—a future I loved and wanted with—almost—all all of my heart. I say “almost” because of the small voice in my soul that whispered that it was still hungry for more. A voice growing louder. I knew I wanted more of God; I knew God wanted more of me. And I knew what He was asking me to do.
And I knew I had to choose.
I wrestled. Why couldn’t I just be like so many other Christians that live in two worlds? I had friends like that. I saw that they were able to say the right things and put on the right masks and get by. For all outwardly and shallow purposes, they could call themselves Christians. They seemed happy enough. I, too, was already on that path. The lies of the Enemy had lurked in the back of my mind for months: You don’t need to take this Christianity thing so seriously. Others don’t.
He was a good man, one of the best I’ve ever met, but he didn’t believe in or know Jesus. For almost three years, I had convinced myself that it didn’t matter. More lies from the Enemy: What’s religion got to do with love? As long as you agree on some important things, you’ll be fine. You don’t need to choose between God and Felix.
But I did. I needed to choose between my will and my Father’s will. And God’s will—always and unchangingly—is that I would be with Him.
My will—a lukewarm Christianity without a true relationship with Jesus—looked like freedom. I would be able to do whatever I wanted. But it was bondage. I would be a slave to myself and my own desires. God’s will looked like bondage; I would have to give something up that I so, so badly wanted. God’s will looked like loss, heartbreak, and heavy, heavy yoke. But it was freedom.
As I knelt with a downcast, tear-streaked face, I knew I had the freedom to make a choice then and there: my will or God’s will.
Through the tears, I told God, “No, Father. I love him. I love his family. I love Germany. I love German. I love living in Germany. I love my plans for the future. I don’t want to make this choice. I love this…please, Father! ”
And suddenly, in that crouched surrender, I felt God’s presence like I had never felt before. He surrounded me and I felt Him say to my heart, “I know. I know.”
In that moment, peace that was DEFINITELY not from my own power flooded me; mere seconds before, I had had NO peace at all about the decision (I’m 100% sure that I was the farthest thing from peace, facedown on the floor at 1 AM). But I had Jesus’ promised peace, and I had made my decision. He knew. Jesus knew what it meant to surrender his will to the Father’s. He knew what it meant to leave loved ones. He knew tears, pain, and even fear when he asked that the cup be passed from him.
And because Jesus chose to obey, I chose to obey.
Jesus obeyed and made the way for me to choose true freedom: the freedom to be able to choose not to serve my own desires in bondage. I could choose to put God’s will before my own. That’s what Jesus did with his freedom! He was free to come down off that cross at any moment, but he didn’t; he chose to surrender in order to serve my personal need and God’s will.
And because Jesus chose to surrender, I chose to surrender: Your will be done.
It was the hardest choice I’ve ever made, and the most influential. I know without a doubt that I would not be on the World Race if I had chosen differently. I would not be walking with God.
I had to choose surrender; there was no way this was going to be effectuated by anything else. I wouldn’t trip and fall and suddenly be okay with God; I had to choose to kneel. Surrender isn’t weakness. While it looked like me falling to my knees, the position of surrender was strength because I was kneeling on the Rock instead of trying to stand, crippled, on shifting sand. Surrender isn’t loss. I’m competitive, and I hateto lose.Surrender didn’t mean that I lost—it meant that God could give me something better once I loosened my grip.
Surrender is a choice, and to choose surrender is to choose freedom. It’s not easy. It’s not always pretty. It can look like crying (and sweating) profusely during a squad prayer sesh, or like bawling your eyes out and wondering if God can be trusted in the surrender (spoiler alert: you can trust Him).
We will all face this choice: the Father’s will or mine, to be with God or apart from him. I’ll say this again, because this sentence is the most important I can write: you are in the midst of choosing yourself or choosing Jesus. And while your opinion on the matter doesn’t change the fact that you are choosing slavery or freedom, I can tell you that your opinion will change how each looks. I can also tell you from experience that if you’re choosing yourself, you are choosing slavery.
And while it’s a climax in our lives when we choose to follow Jesus, it won’t be the last time we have to choose surrender. In fact, as Christians, we will have to choose to surrender our will—to die to ourselves—daily. We are told to choose to pick up our cross—an instrument of death—daily. We will crucify ourselves and our own wills every day in obedience to Father and with our eyes on Jesus, who went before us.
And it is true freedom.
K-Squad came together again last night and through a time of prayer and discussion, we decided that the vision for K-Squad is “Bringing freedom through the heartbeat of Jesus.” We have 10 more months of walking this vision out and learning about freedom and Jesus’ heartbeat, but I know that K-Squad is already surrendering expectations as we spend our first two months of the Race pioneering new countries. We’re all in the position of surrender as we give God the next 10 months of our lives. God has brought 50 Racers and two team leaders together from all kinds of different backgrounds, but we have this surrender in common. And from our position of strength in surrender, we will bring freedom.
And with that vision, we head to Ghana on Tuesday!
Kaleidoscope will travel 22 hours by bus over the course of 2 days to our new ministry in Sunyani, Ghana. It’s going to smell great and be super fun. 😉 I will update you from there! Please pray for our safe travels and for a perfectly sound bus!
