Tonight I lay – not in bed but in dread.
I hate nights like these. But after about twenty minutes (maybe an hour) of it, I decided to do some good for our house by leaving my wife (not in that way) for an overnight dish clean (so I claim), and thought, “Might as well turn on a Tim Keller podcast while I do it.”
Of course, I would have much rather hung out with my friend, dread, but as Auden wrote of it, “We would rather die in dread/Than climb the cross of the moment/And let our illusions die.”
Tonight, I decided I wouldn’t die in dread, I’d climb the cross of the moment and do overnight dishes (again, so I claim).
Keller’s sermon, called “Your Plans, God’s plans” (you can listen to it, via his podcast on Spotify), turned out to be very good.
Especially for someone like myself, who was a bit stuck in myself. Maybe for you, if you are, as well.
In it, Keller talks about the word, “commit,” and says it “literally means to roll over onto, to put all of your weight on.”
As Christians, we’re to commit, to “trust God for all things that happen in your life.”
He then quotes Elisabeth Eliot, who once wrote: “The more we pay for advice, the more we are likely to listen to it. Advice from a friend, which is free, we may take or leave. It’s free. Advice from a consultant we’ve paid much for, personally, we’re more likely to accept. But it’s still our choice – we can take it or leave it. But the guidance of God is different.
First of all, we do not come to God, asking for advice but for God’s will. And that is not optional.
And God’s fee is the highest one of all – it costs everything. To ask for the guidance of God requires abandonment. We no longer say, ‘If I trust you, you will give me such and such,’ instead we must say ‘I trust from you — give me or withhold from me whatever you choose’.”
Keller goes on to say that committing to God means, “I will accept anything you send me, whether I understand it or not. But I’m not going to bail on you.”
Hard.
Now, hear me out (read me out, sorry).
I’m living proof that it’s hard, because each day I struggle so hard with really committing to the idea of committing.
It’s a lifelong battle, and no matter the brief respites I get, it will remain one until I die.
Now, sure, I’ve committed to Christ for salvation in the next life, but my faith in his salvation in this one is so so small.
We often have a much easier time with commitment and faith when it’s about heaven than earth.
And here’s why. We believe heaven is perfect. But we know God says trials and tribulations are our lot down here.
So when Keller says we need to tell God, “I will accept anything you send me,” we know it’s in the context of unspeakable atrocities that occur to even children.
Commitment is hard. Faith is rare and small.
But remember this — when he lived on earth, Jesus knew how small faith could be, and yet it could still be real.
In fact, read the Gospels and when anyone came to him with even the slightest hint of faith, he marveled. Not because their faith was objectively so large. But because any faith, at all, was unexpected.
We need to remember that, because that’s what Jesus wants us to remember from those interactions.
And when we’re trying hard to commit in the way Keller mentions, don’t beat yourself up if you fall short of perfect commitment.
Jesus committed to God’s plan for his life perfectly, he committed to the cup of suffering perfectly, but did that make it easier? Did it make him dread Gethsemane less?
Maybe, maybe not.
All we know is that Jesus committed perfectly to his Father, and yet was a man of sorrows and well-acquainted with our grief.
In other words, just because you dread something in the future doesn’t mean you haven’t committed to something in the present or the future God has in store for you.
So don’t doubt your saving faith over it.
But inform your living faith with it.
We’ve got faith in Christ, but to what extent do we commit each day to God?
It varies, doesn’t it?
Some days, I’m there. Fully committing. Other days, I’m barely remembering.
So commitment as an expression of our faith is not fixed. And just as our faith can wax and wane, so can our commitment.
Remember, also, that Eliot and Keller’s words are aspirational. We are human and can never be perfect at this. But as disciples of Jesus, his faith in his Father is our aspiration. And he committed fully. But he was the only one who could commit fully and that’s the whole point of why he came.
If we could theoretically commit fully, there’d be no need for Christ.
So when you think of this word “commit,” try to view it as something aspirational that can animate your life right now instead of drag it down — that just because it’s aspirational doesn’t mean it’s a heavy load.
Aspirational things are not, by definition, heavy loads.
For example, I want to read more. I’m excited to read more. I know I’m ignorant about so many things, but I don’t think, “What an ignorant fool I am” and just close the chapter and quit the pages.
No, I’m excited to read more and it’s not a heavy thing, but an animating one.
I acknowledge I’m ignorant, can learn more, and am working on how to get there.
So even though we’re to commit to Christ, it doesn’t mean — by any stretch of theological imagination — he’ll expect us to get there because that’s the purpose of Jesus.
And as with anything aspirational, commitment and surrender to Christ are ongoing things.
I recently wrote about “surrender” because that word, thanks to watching an interview with Bono talking about his faith and life, made such a profound difference for me last year.
“Surrender” is a ubiquitous word and theme in Christian parlance, but one we really don’t grasp as a verb.
Sure, surrendering to Christ is an act of faith in his salvation, but surrendering to him daily is an ongoing, waxing and waning thing.
It’s not easy.
Surrender is the hardest path, but the one to take to get to the most beautiful meadow.
Of course, you can get to some kind of meadow by a path of less trust, but only through darkest test of our truth can we get to the lightest view of God and life. One that’s light from radiance, not substance, but its deep substance becomes so light that it shines instead of crushes.
It’s not the “unbearable lightness of being” that Kundera wrote of, but rather a lightness of being that makes everything bearable. If only for a moment.
When we feel the relief of our momentary stays in Immanuel’s Land, the reality of God With Us transforms us. “God, you really are here, you do love me, and you do have all this figured out.”
But the walk there? The surrender.
Well, we often don’t make it, do we? Especially at night. Nights of dread. We get stuck in the maze of our minds (and for many of us, it’s because of a brain condition called OCD or anxiety etc, so there’s a scientific explanation for why we’re particularly prone to getting lost).
But still, we get stuck.
It feels awful, to be stuck, to feel you’re on the border of surrendering your day and your plan to Christ, but, if you’re being totally honest, unable to really truly get there.
Well, guess who’s there in that doubt to tell you there’s no doubt his work on the cross is enough.
The one named “Jesus,” because he’s the “deliverer.”
When we’re stuck, when we’re struggling to commit, when we’re struggling to surrender, the perfect Jesus who did it all right, so we could get it wrong — the one who loves us as brothers and sisters, comes to deliver us, and he’s here’s because the Father smiled at us and said he has loved us eternally.
So while there’s relief when we actually do commit and make it to the radiance of Immanuel’s Land by surrendering our plan to God on a daily basis, Christ also wants us to find relief when we can’t. just. quite. make. it. to total surrender.
Because, as one desperate dad in the gospel of Mark cried out to Jesus in a kind of commitment, mixed with plenty of fear and doubt, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”
And Jesus immediately healed the man’s son. Despite the dad’s failure to entirely believe. But because that desperate dad still had enough tiny faith to say, “Help my unbelief!”
Jesus doesn’t require much. But the more we give him, the more he shows us himself, and from the source of all beauty is beauty.
So now we can rest in the work of Christ’s, confident he has healed us, and we remember that the one who loves us really does love us and that to commit to him is to recognize that the love that once hung on the cross for us is still, alive, this instant, working for us.
So, on this night of dread (that lingers even as I write), I pray in doubt but in enough faith that I’m willing to say it but not entirely believe it, “God, I’m giving this to you.”
Am I really giving it? Only God knows.
But there’s only one person who’d forgive me for not giving it.
Trust that as best you can (imperfectly), and remember Christ does saving as best he can. Perfectly.
Perfect for us, right?
I finish with this: When you pray tonight, God told us exactly how he wants us to address him: “Daddy.” That should tell you everything about how he feels for you. Even when you wonder whether you’re actually loved or truly surrendering.
After all, as parents, we don’t hold our kids’ doubts against them. Instead, we just hold them.
So, as Rich Mullins sang, “Jesus, hold me, even when I’m shaking like a leaf.”
