Between the Two Ponds
One passage. One idea. A few quiet minutes. Short devotional readings for people being formed by grace, written from a small chair beside still water in Falcon, Colorado.
Pull one up. Read slowly. There is no hurry here.
One Word Short
We are very good at the first half. Father, take this from me. Father, heal her. Father, fix this thing that is breaking me.
"Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." (Luke 22:42)
Most of our prayers stop one word short. We are very good at the first half. Father, take this from me. Father, heal her. Father, fix the thing that is breaking me. That half is honest and right, and Jesus prayed it himself, so no one can tell you that wanting relief is a failure of faith.
But he did not stop there, and we do. We pray up to the nevertheless and then go quiet, because the nevertheless is where a prayer stops being a request and becomes a surrender, and surrender is the one thing a person cannot do halfway. To say yet is to hand over the outcome. It is to say, I have told you what I want, and I meant every word of it, and I am not pretending I did not want it, and I am giving you the last word anyway.
That is not resignation. Resignation says it does not matter. Yet says it matters enormously, and you matter more. The two could not be further apart, though from the outside they can look the same. We do not always get there. Some nights we stop at the cup, unable to say the harder word, and even then we are in good company, because he sweated blood before he could say it. But do not settle at the cup as though it were the summit. Pray the whole prayer. Add the word that costs you the outcome, and discover that the God you handed it to can be trusted with it.
Led, Not Driven
Not to strain. Not to grit. Not to summon whatever is left of your resolve at the halfway point and force your body up the rest of the hill.
"But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." (Galatians 5:18)
What does it actually mean to be led? Not to strain. Not to grit. Not to summon the last of your resolve at the halfway point and force yourself up the rest of the climb. Led means something has hold of you and is drawing you forward, and your one task is to stop resisting it. That is the whole assignment: to become responsive rather than reluctant, aware rather than distracted, open rather than braced, obedient rather than forever negotiating. And then to walk into whatever God is calling you into, even when it looks impossible from where you stand.
Be careful here, because this is exactly where people hear grace and reach for their coats, as though being led meant nothing is required. It does not mean that. Peter still had to get into the boat. Abraham still had to leave the country. You will still, at some point today, have to do a thing you do not want to do. Being led is not being carried while you sleep.
But there is all the difference in the world between a man dragging a cart and a man on a horse. Both are moving. Both are tired by the end of the day. Only one is spending his own strength to make the load go, and only one is likely to make it home. The flesh drags the cart. The Spirit gives the horse.
Most of us have tasted only a crumb of what it is to be carried like that, a moment here and there when prayer stopped being a shove and became a being-drawn. Do not settle for the crumb as though it were the whole meal. There is a loaf. Ask for it.
An Obedience That Costs Your Expertise
Then a carpenter got into his boat, and told a professional fisherman where to fish, in the middle of the day, in the deep water, which is exactly the wrong time and the wrong place, and any man in that trade would have known it.
"And Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." (Luke 5:10)
Peter had fished all night and caught nothing. Then a carpenter climbed into his boat and told a professional fisherman where to fish, in the middle of the day, out in the deep water, which is exactly the wrong time and the wrong place, and any man in the trade would have known it. And Peter did it anyway.
That is the hinge of the whole story, and everything after it hangs on that one act, a man doing the thing that made no sense to him in the very place where he was the expert. The nets came up so full they began to tear. The other boat had to come. Both boats began to sink under the weight of it. And Peter, standing knee deep in more fish than he had ever seen, does not celebrate. He falls down and says, depart from me, I am a sinful man.
That is what happens when a man gets close enough to see who is actually in the boat with him. He does not feel worthy. He feels exposed. The blessing did not make him confident. The blessing made him aware. And Jesus does not leave. He says, do not be afraid.
This is where surrender begins, and notice where it begins: on a boat Peter owned, in water he knew, doing a thing he was certain would not work. It did not start with a decision made in a tent. It started with an obedience that cost him his expertise. That is usually where it starts for us too. Not with agreeing to something, but with letting Christ overrule the one place where you were sure you already knew better.
Believing and Surrendering
There is a flaw that can hide inside the way we share the gospel, and I have fallen into it myself.
"For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Philippians 1:21)
There is a flaw that can hide inside the way we speak about faith. You ask someone about theirs, and they tell you they believe in a higher power, and you say what you have said a hundred times, you have to believe in Jesus, and they answer, I do believe in him. And there we stop, satisfied, certain something has happened. But there is a difference between believing and surrendering, and the whole of the Christian life is lived in the gap between them.
Believing is the first step. It acknowledges that Jesus is real, that he existed, that he is who he said he was. That is something. It is not nothing. But it is not yet enough, because belief has a second step to take, and the second step is surrender. To place your faith in Christ is not merely to be persuaded of him. It is to hand yourself over.
For most of us it begins in the mind. Who is the way, the truth, the life. Jesus. And then, slowly, what the mind holds about Christ works its way down out of the head and into the depths of the heart, where affection actually lives, and faith moves from believing in Christ to living for him. That is Paul's whole sentence. For me to live is Christ. Not, for me to be convinced of Christ. To live is Christ.
Even the demons believe, and tremble. Belief that costs nothing and changes nothing is not yet the thing that saves. So ask yourself the question plainly, the one that goes underneath mere agreement. Do you believe in Jesus, or have you given him your life? A great many people can answer the first. He is asking the second.