Surrender and Freedom

“We do not become free of God by a disregard of Divine will. Instead, by such disregard we forge the chains of our bondage.” David Benner

I’ve been trying to understand how freedom comes through surrender. It’s another beautiful paradox that reveals our foolishness. Here we thought our independence would give us freedom. Like our predecessors Adam and Eve, we want to be like God without God’s help, and it leads to our ruin. But God wants to rescue us and give us life. It’s a running theme throughout His story. Truly living comes through freedom. Freedom comes through our death. So we cannot truly live unless we die. We cannot experience freedom except through our destruction—the destruction of our self-made godlikeness in exchange for the God-given likeness that sets us free to be the self He has created us to be, an exchange made possible through the death of Christ. But we are so unwilling to die that we don’t experience this life and freedom. Ours is a story full of irony and delusion.

John Donne understood this. This poem of his has held its place as my favorite for many years because he so masterfully reveals this paradox, this battle between the forfeit that he knows will bring freedom versus his will to persist in captivity. We need God to break in and set us free—by Divine imprisonment.

HOLY SONNET XIV
Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

“Imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free.” Allowing God to be the warden of my life frees me. And it reveals the reality of my delusion. Batter my heart so I can see!

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 1 Corinithians 1:18