PAX BOOK SERIES REFLECTION GUIDE SURRENDER TO LOVE By David Benner
PAX BOOK REFLECTION GUIDE Surrender to Love by David Benner Preface He wants our heart. He wants our love and he offers us his. He invites us to surrender to his love. David Benner...how frightening even the idea of surrender is to some people. p.9 How do you react to the idea of surrender? Why? Christians often focus on obedience more than surrender. p.10 Do you think it is easier to focus on obedience vs. surrender? Why or why not? Love invites surrender, and surrender is at the core of spirituality p.11 What is the connection between love and surrender for you? How might you envision surrender at the core of your spiritual life? Chapter 1 It all Begins with Love Imagine God thinking about you. What do you assume God feels when you come to mind? p.16 Try this exercise. What do you assume God feels when you come to His mind? Disappointment? Frustration? Delight? Joy?...how God sees us has important implications for our spiritual journey...with disgust, disappointment, frustration or anger...the motive for any obedience you might offer will be fear rather than love, and there will be little genuine surrender. p.17 How does your assumption of how God feels about you affect your spiritual journey? What is your motive for obedience? What difference would it make if you realized that God was head-over-heals in love with you.? p.18 We do not know if the older son will be able to relinquish his effort to earn love and accept the father s invitation to take his place at the feast. p.20 In what ways do you notice yourself trying to earn love?
Where does that need to earn love come from? The Spirit hovering over the unformed earth is a picture of God s tenderness and loving presence. It is an important part of the creation love story. p.22 Imagine your life as part of a love story. You are the main character pursued by the lover. What stirs in you as you sit with this image of your life story? God chooses us to be his friends...human beings exist because of God s desire for companionship...intimate communion with their head-over-heels-in-love creator God. p.23 Sit with and consider God wanting your companionship, your friendship. What bubbles up in you? Created from love and for love, humans...spurned God s love in favor of what was perceived to be freedom...but what we get are weed-infested gardens of compulsion and idolatry. Instead of rest we get addiction and self-preoccupation. And our restlessness grows. p.23&24 What is restless in you? What are your soft addictions--tv? Work? Sports? Food? How might your restlessness be a clue as to where you have spurned God s love for you? We miss the point when we simply try to do what [Jesus] tells us to do...it is the experience of love that is transformational. (The story of Angie) p.25 & 26 How have you experienced or encountered God s love? What was the role of surrender? What was transformed or softened in your heart? Pain? mistrust? anger? Benner makes a distinction between what we believe about God vs. what we know about God; a personal knowing that goes beyond objective knowing. He then goes on to say: Many --even evangelicals who talk the most about a personal relationship with God--will not have much to say about how they actually experience God...A.W. Tozer notes that most of us who call ourselves Christians do so on the basis of belief more than experience. We have, he argues substituted theological ideas for an arresting encounter, we are full of religious notions but our great weakness is that for our hearts there is no one there. p.27 How do you know God personally vs. objectively? What is the difference for you in knowing God in your heart vs. your head? Is your identity grounded in an experiential knowing of yourself as deeply loved by God? Why or why not? p.31 Do you fear an encounter with God s love? Why or why not? Does it seem hard to believe that when God thinks of you, love swells in His heart and a smile comes to his face? p.32 Review For Further Reflection on page 32 and spend some time meditating with the biblical passages Benner offers.
Chapter 2 Love and Fear My own spiritual journey began with frantic steps to ensure that I escaped God s punishment...i tried to believe that God was a God of love, but what was prominent in my mind was his justice and holiness. p.35 & 36 Do you approach God with a sense of fear? Why or why not? Do you offer Him appeasement? How?...most fearful people do not think of themselves as afraid...phaedra lived her life within narrow boundaries...caution and control were her watchwords...they were also masks of fear--fear of being misunderstood, fear of making a misstep and fear of being out of control. p.38 Do you consider yourself to be a fearful person? Why or why not? As you look at the list of Phaedra fears, do any resonate with you?...fear breeds control. People who live in fear feel compelled to remain in control. p.40 Do you agree with this statement? Why or why not? One particularly important feeling that often lies at the root of fear is guilt...to have failed or done something dreadfully bad. These feelings...tend to seep into consciousness as fear. p.41 Do you sense any feelings of guilt in your life? How might these feelings turn into fear? Love is dangerous precisely because it invites surrender...later disappointments in love sometimes surface when we are faced with love as adults. As a result, some people find themselves unable to let go... p.44 How might past relationships affect your ability to surrender to God s love? Share with God... What makes grace amazing is that it and it alone can free us from our fears and make us truly whole and free...[but] grace is totally alien to human psychology. We want to get our house in order and then let God love and accept us. p.46 Is grace alien in the house of your heart? Do you prefer to get things in order first? Why or why not? Encountering such a God is terrifying because encountering perfect love is an invitation to abandon ego. A God of our own making would be much less terrifying. p.47 What does it mean for you to abandon ego? How does your ego affect your image of God? Your control of God? Perfect love overcomes fear...[angie] had to learn to bring her fears to God..as she soaked in God s love--daring to believe that this was the fundamental truth of her identity--slowly she watched her fears drop away. p.49
What fears might drop away as you soak in God s love for you? For Further Reflection: The courage to face unpleasant aspects of our inner self comes from feeling deeply loved. It also comes from the assurance that we are safe. Our gaze needs to go back and forth between divine love and our fears. p.50 Chapter 3 Surrender and Obedience The surrender Jesus invites from us--choosing his will and his life over our own--can never be motivated by anything but love. But we can and frequently do offer a substitute for surrender-- something that looks superficially enough like it that we easily confuse it with surrender. We can offer obedience. p.55 What is the difference between surrender and obedience? Which is more appealing to you? Why? While obedience may be demanding, we are tempted to think that it is achievable if we put our mind to it and are prepared for lots of hard work...we need to be very suspicious when selfcontrol and egocentricity are left unchallenged in our Christ following. p.56 Do you prefer hard work over surrender? Why or why not? Do you notice places in your life where self-control goes unchallenged? Where? Obedience that flows from a surrendered heart is totally different. Rather than willpower and resolve, love is the motive for what we will and what we do. p.58 What would make obedience from a heart soaked in being loved different for you? Paradoxically, the abundant life promised us in Christ comes not from grasping but from releasing. It comes not from striving but from relinquishing...surrender is a readiness to trust that is based in love. p.60 Is it hard for you to trust? Why or why not? What surfaces in you as you imagine sitting before God with open hands? Does that feel too vulnerable? Why or why not? Surrender is the discovery that we are in a river of love and that we float without having to do anything. p.63 Is the image of floating down a river appealing to you? Do you prefer to swim? Sit with this image. What surfaces for you? We should obey God because he has won our heart in love. If he has not, our focus should not be so much on obedience as on knowing his love. p.64 Where is God inviting your focus to be? Why?
Christian surrender is saying yes to God s Yes! to me...this is the core of Christian spiritual transformation. p.66 Where have you seen transformation in your life? What was the role of surrender? What was the role of obedience? Chapter 4 Transformed by Love...if we dare to be honest, we all know our need for radical change. We know the immense difference between our outward appearance and inner reality. Our love is more self-serving than it appears, our woundedness deeper... p.73 What is the difference between your outer appearance and inner reality? How large is the gap that perfect love longs to fill? If an encounter with divine love is so transformational, how is it that so many of us have survived such encounters relatively unchanged?...genuine transformation requires vulnerability. It is not the fact of being loved unconditionally that is life changing. It is the risky experience of allowing myself to be loved unconditionally. p.76 What is the difference for you between an encounter with love vs. allowing yourself to be loved unconditionally? Does that feel risky? Vulnerable? Why or why not? Everything within me wants to show my best pretend self to both people and God...When this pretend self receives love it simply becomes stronger and I am even more deeply in bondage to my false ways of living. p.77 How has your best pretend self been reinforced or affirmed in our culture? By family? Friends? How has that kept you in bondage and thwarted biblical transformation? How terrifying it is to face my naked and needy self--the self that longs for love...to know that I am loved, I must accept the frightening helplessness and vulnerability that is my true state. p.78 Are you able to face your naked and needy self? Is that terrifying for you? Why or why not? Benner relays Trevor Hudson s retelling of the parable of the banquet in Luke 14:15-24 as the process of inner transformation. Review this retelling on page 82. Who of yourself do you invite to the banquet? Who do you exclude? Why? Are you anxious to retreat and to try to get on with [your] self improvement projects? Are you able to linger at the table long enough for love to penetrate your woundedness? Why or why not? We must meet God s love in our vulnerability and brokenness, not simply in our strength and togetherness. p.82 Where do you prefer to meet God? How does that affect healing and change in your inner life?
While human love can never bear the weight of our need for divine love, it can support transformation and teach us about divine love. Human love communicates divine love. p.84 How has human love communicated divine love to you? How has human love prepared you to surrender to divine love? Chapter 5 Becoming Love The point of God s love is to remake us in his image of love...[god] want us to be known as great lovers because love is his way. p.90 What do you want to be known as? Why? We want a spirituality of success and ascent not a spirituality of failure and decent. We want a spirituality of improvement, not a spirituality of transformation. But the way of the cross is the way of descent, abandon and death...love always involves not just saying yes to someone but also saying no to self. p.91 What kind of spirituality do you want? How do you respond to the spirituality of the cross? Where in your life might you need to say no to self? Transformation into love is a shift from a focus on me to an awareness of the greater we...the person who is becoming love leaves behind the broken husk of the isolated self and embraces the new possibilities of life in the human community. p.93 How have you experienced God s love reconnecting you with people/community? What difference does community make in your life of love? All movement toward genuine wholeness represents growth in love. p.97 How have you experienced the truth of this statement? Love is not, first and foremost, something that we do. More basically, it is who we are...growth in love is not an accomplishment but the receipt of a gift. p. 97 &100 Invite God to help you open your hands to receive the gift of His love for you. Where might surrender transform fear into the sweet intimacy of communion in Love? Note: These reflection guides were created by Rama Ziegenhals as a resource to aid you in your study and growth and therefore do not contain the opinions or commentary of the author.