Surrender is the first stone our toes touch on the path toward God, and each moment asks this same relinquishment of us. As we submit ourselves and our wills to God, he begins to occupy his proper place within us, until it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us. And as he leads us, he will lead others through us. John the Baptist is a model in this.
John was a celebrity in his day. Immense crowds came out to see him, so much so that the king worried that John might lead a rebellion. But when Jesus came—the one for whom John had been making straight the way, the one whose sandals John was not worthy to remove, the Bridegroom for whom John was merely the groomsman—John was more than ready to lead from the second chair. “He must become greater,” John said; “I must become less.”
John’s followers may have had trouble seeing it, but by placing himself beneath Jesus, John was doing what was best for them. The focus had to shift from preparation to actualization of God’s plan of salvation. And that meant placing Jesus in the spotlight.
As John shrank so that Jesus might grow, we likewise are called to yield our puny plans to Jesus’ agenda for our lives. It took me seven years, through my late twenties, to realize that I was looking through this telescope from the wrong end: I was trying to fit God into my plans instead of submitting myself to his plan. A week after this realization, I submitted my life to Jesus on that run around the lake, though my surrender dripped with the residual reluctance of my strong will rather than exuding the fragrance of John’s gracious submission.
Over time, this initial act of surrender has led me to take positions with companies that had lost their way and to others requiring a comprehensive turnaround—financially, operationally, strategically, and reputationally. In part, I said yes to these roles out of a desire to see whether these principles and this prototype we have in Jesus would stand up to the heat of the kitchen. They have. And in the cases where I failed externally, God has grown me internally.
Sometimes big change masquerades as small change. We go to the meetings as we are directed by our electronic calendars, but we increasingly see these commitments and our to-do lists as God’s call on our time as we develop these priorities in prayer. Seen from the outside, what we do may change little or not at all, but how we do what we do and why we do what we do are radically altered as we come to view every moment as a sacrament.
Surrendered leadership leads us into freedom. We might find ourselves freer to constructively speak our mind in a conversation, bound more by a desire to move the discussion forward than by a straitjacket of concern about how we will be received by others. We might view the “walk-in business” as less of an interruption and more of an opportunity to respond to the needs of others that emerge in the course of the day. I might be more inclined to ask my executive assistant about her weekend, or be as genuinely interested in my colleague’s son who broke his arm playing lacrosse as in the quality of the financial analysis I’d asked her to perform.
Surrender to God does not leave us floating in purposeless irrelevance. It brings focus and meaning. God knows we have work to do during the course of our days. He asks us to work, just as he is always at his work. But now our work takes on greater importance and meaning, for God’s work becomes our work.
Jesus understands the pressure of the demands on our lives because of the demands he experienced during his life. The needs of the people were endless, and the requests of the crowds were relentless.
Once he sent his apostles out to do the work he commanded, and while they were gone he learned the bitter news that Herod had beheaded John the Baptist. Jesus must have been deeply bereaved. “Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to [his disciples], ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest’” (Mark 6:31).
But when the boat arrived on the other side of the lake, the crowds were waiting for them. “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (v. 34). I would not have had compassion on them. I would have been impatient with them, frustrated that they had broken into my time of rest. I would have thought I deserved time to grieve my deceased friend and forerunner. It is a testimony to Jesus’ character that, even in his exhaustion, he considered the needs of others more than his own. Even under pressure, his perspective and his purpose were unwavering.
In April 2018, the world learned about Southwest flight 1380, whose left engine exploded, causing the cabin to decompress and putting the passengers in mortal danger. Nearing the airport for an emergency landing, the pilot, Tammy Jo Shults, grasped for what to do. It was then that the cockpit recorder captured her saying, “Heavenly Father?” And when she landed, “Thank you, Lord. you, thank you, Lord.” Prayer had long been an integral part of Tammy Jo’s life. She learned a key lesson through this experience: under pressure, habits become instincts.
Surrendered leadership doesn’t universally prescribe that we always be focused or relaxed, tough-minded or tenderhearted, compassionate or demanding. Jesus exhibited all of these attributes during his stay with us on earth. The surrendered life is not servitude to a set of precepts but submission to a person who is our example and who is with us in every circumstance of our lives. As we grow into deeper relationship with him, his desires become our desires. His instincts become our instincts. His compassion becomes our compassion.
As Jesus increases and we decrease, our will is increasingly united with God’s will, and his will is done on earth as it is in heaven. This is his plan for the world and a great source of joy in ours.
Adapted from The Spiritual Art of Business by Barry L. Rowan. ©2023 by Rowan Publishing LLC. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
