Surrender Continually (21 Days of Surrender #4)

Today is day 21 — the end of our 21 days of prayer and fasting. This is our seventh or eighth year doing it, and this year the theme was surrender. Many of us have been working through a devotional written by members of the Riverwood family: a passage of Scripture, a short reflection, and a simple prayer.

Here is part of what today’s entry says:

We spent the first 20 days of 2024 together surrendering our lives, our egos, our desires, our relationships, our time — our everything — to God. But what should we do on this 21st day? First, we need to celebrate.

If you experienced a breakthrough, or felt close to God, or heard from Him in a way that moved you toward Christlikeness — or even watched God work in someone else here — then worship Him and celebrate it.

I realize these 21 days may have been hard. For some of you it was simply one more thing. Maybe you saw God work for a single hour out of three weeks. And even if the whole experience was frankly awful, you still know that God sent His only Son to die for our sins and rise again — so if you feel there is nothing else worth celebrating, you can celebrate that.

What People Shared

We opened the microphone, and what came out was worth recording.

One person said God revealed a great many weaknesses — which is not especially fun — but alongside them showed how good and faithful He is by contrast. He moved on things that had been prayed over for years. There was not peace for the whole three weeks, but there were moments of more peace than there would otherwise have been. And cutting out the usual distractions — social media, games, the things we reach for — made it possible to see what God was doing more clearly.

Another said the two hardest days were surrendering plans and surrendering career. Plans that never panned out. But looking back, it became possible to see all the people who had been helped precisely because those plans did not go the desired direction — and to see the people who had shown up and cared during genuinely hard seasons, who would never have been there if everything had arrived on schedule. The conclusion: whether the promotion comes or doesn’t, whether the job changes or doesn’t, none of that is the point. God is in control and blazes the path forward.

And another spoke about the power of community in surrendering — that after eight years of doing this, the difference this time was surrendering alongside sisters in Christ. More texts exchanged in three weeks than in years. One arriving that very morning: thank you for your prayers, they reminded me God is listening. We each surrender individually, but we are meant to do it corporately too. God gives us His Holy Spirit — and He gives us each other.

Then Keep Going

Here is the next paragraph of that devotional, which sets up everything else:

Second, you need to keep going. The purpose of these 21 days wasn’t to fulfil a duty or simply have a short-term spiritual experience, but to help build into you the inner posture of a Jesus follower who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at his word.

That is what God wants for you, not merely from you. In a sense He wants you to surrender continually. So how do we get from 21 days to a lifetime posture?

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. — Proverbs 3:5–6 (ESV)

If you are new to the Bible, let me let you in on a poorly kept secret: these are very famous verses. Plenty of Christians have them memorized. If you grew up in church, someone probably wrote them in your graduation card. You may have offered them to a friend who did not know what to decide, or had them offered to you.

I wanted to prove to myself just how famous, so I searched them on YouTube. I knew there would be plenty. I did not expect hundreds, possibly thousands — full forty-five-minute sermons on these two verses, three-minute devotionals, an absolute mountain of one-minute shorts, videos for kids, videos for adults, videos in other languages, and music videos whose entire lyrics are Proverbs 3:5–6.

The Twenty Dollar Auction

This past week I learned about a game — really a thought experiment — called the twenty dollar auction. It was devised in 1971 by the economist Martin Shubik and popularized in the nineties by Max Bazerman, a Harvard professor who liked to open his first MBA class with it.

So we played it. I auctioned a perfectly ordinary twenty dollar bill — nothing rare or old about it — under two non-negotiable rules.

Rule one: all bids in one dollar increments. No $2.50, no $10.71. And you cannot jump — if your neighbour bids five, the only permissible next bid is six.

Rule two: the highest bidder wins the twenty and pays. But the second highest bidder is also held to their bid — they pay, and receive nothing.

So if the winning bid were twelve, that person gets twenty dollars for twelve — an eight dollar profit, a good day. And the runner-up at eleven pays eleven for nothing. I collect twenty-three, hand over twenty, and walk away with three. Two of us happy, one furious. What a church.

The bidding started at a dollar and climbed briskly. It got genuinely fun around ten. It passed twenty — which is where I was hoping we would get to — and kept going. It finally stopped at twenty-eight dollars, with the runner-up on the hook for twenty-seven.

(And just as Jesus has forgiven my sins, I forgave those debts. I did not say so at the start, for fear people would bid recklessly knowing they were off the hook.)

Shubik designed the game to expose a paradox in rational choice theory. Watch what happens: it narrows to two people, and once the bidding passes twenty they both realize they are going to lose money no matter what. But the winner loses less, because they recoup the twenty. So bidding twenty-seven feels ridiculous — and yet it is only a seven dollar loss. Meanwhile the other person is facing a twenty-six dollar loss for nothing, so bidding twenty-eight is obviously better for them. And their opponent reasons identically. And it climbs. Bazerman says he regularly watched bids sail past a hundred dollars.

Each individual step is perfectly rational. The destination is absurd.

We Are Being Auctioned To

I did not play that game merely to show how rational choices produce irrational outcomes. I played it because our culture — and our own sinful, selfish nature — is constantly running a twenty dollar auction on us. You can have this. Just bid a little. The joy of it will be yours. And we end up paying vastly more than we were led to believe.

Take one example. Our culture loves alcohol. Turn on a playoff game and count the advertisements — beer, wine, whiskey, cocktails.

There are studies suggesting a glass or two of wine a week carries some health benefit. I have plenty of friends who have one or two beers and are entirely fine. But we all know — many of us from experience — the times it does not stop at one or two, or three or four. We have known people who went to six, or ten, or well beyond.

And suddenly that twenty dollars’ worth of joy and peace and escape has cost enormously more. Not merely what was spent at the bar. It has cost people their reputation. Their health. Their relationships. Their conscience. Their car. For some it has cost their life, or someone else’s.

None of this surprises you. Nobody here is thinking wait — if I drink too much and drive, I could crash? I had no idea. We all know. And weekend after weekend, people keep bidding for their twenty dollars of freedom. I could give you a dozen other examples. What seems rational turns out to be deeply irrational.

Solomon is calling us to something better. And he begins with trust.

You Already Trust Something

For some of you that word lands easily. You have people you trust with your heart, your future, your worries — a spouse, a parent, a close friend, someone you have handed all sorts of rubbish to who stayed anyway.

Others of you have been betrayed and hurt, and you would say you have trust issues.

Here is what I want you to see: even if you have trust issues, you still trust. You may not trust people, because they hurt you. You may not trust authority, because you have known leaders who were hypocrites. But you trust yourself. You trust your own judgment that this person is not trustworthy. You trust your own decision-making, because clearly these others do not know how to decide well.

Some of us trust the majority — we trust the culture, because surely that many people cannot be wrong. If the culture calls something acceptable, we go with it. Others do trust authority, reasoning that anyone who got to that level must know something.

We all trust. You were made to trust. Solomon’s point is where. Not the culture first. Not the government first. Not even the people closest to you first. The first place your trust belongs is God.

And notice he does not say trust Him with one area, or with most of your life. He says with all your heart. Usually when Scripture says “heart” it means the seat of the emotions, but I don’t think Solomon means only your affections or only your fears. I think it is comprehensive: all your thoughts, all your worries, all your future, all your decisions, all your identity. Trust Him with yourself.

What “Lean” Actually Means

Then he clarifies: and do not lean on your own understanding.

When my son first ran cross country in middle school, he leaned. It was the strangest thing — he would list off to one side as he came round the track. He was never varsity, never especially fast, but he loved it. So a lot of my cheering sounded like: “Great job! You’re doing great! Stand up straight! Keep going, buddy!” (He is fine now — he took up triathlons at university and is training again as spring comes.)

That is not the leaning Solomon means. He is not describing a slight incline. He means the way you lean against a wall — putting your entire weight on it because you trust it will not give way.

Do not put your whole weight on your own understanding. Put it on God’s.

For some of you that is insulting, because you are intelligent and capable and have done a great many things well by trusting your own judgment. But Solomon was called the wisest man of his day. If the wisest man on earth says I cannot even lean on my own understanding, you and I should take note.

Besides — your understanding is growing and changing. Why lean your full weight on something that keeps shifting? Your understanding is affected by your emotions, and by the people around you. It moves. It is simply not as reliable as God’s. He is protecting you.

The Word Hiding Inside “Acknowledge”

Verse 6: in all your ways acknowledge him.

The dictionary defines acknowledge as to accept or admit the existence or truth of something. I like that, because it means acknowledging God is not merely accepting that He is real — it is admitting that His knowledge is more reliable than mine. That He probably knows better, because He sees all of it while I see one thin sliver.

But we can make it simpler. Look at the heart of the word: know.

To acknowledge God is to say I know God. And if you truly know Him — not know about Him, but know Him — then you will know you can trust Him. You will know His understanding is better than yours and His ways are better than yours. If you know Him, you will gladly acknowledge Him in all your ways.

A Smooth Road Was a Gift

God does not tell us these things as a taskmaster trying to subjugate us. He does it for our benefit — which is the last phrase: and he will make straight your paths.

The word translated “straight” can also be rendered “smooth.” In Solomon’s day — well before Rome and its road-building — a smooth road was a genuine gift. Most roads were worn paths where feet and carts and animals had passed. It was entirely normal for a road to have rocks in it, or ground that had sunk into ruts. Your cart gets jostled and something falls out. You have to crawl along. You hit a hollow and tip the whole load and spend an hour reloading it. You break a wheel.

So finding a smooth, straight road meant you would arrive faster and in better shape. That is Solomon’s poetry: trust the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding, acknowledge Him in all your ways — and He will make your life smoother.

But do not mishear it. This does not mean that if you give your life to God your problems disappear.

In Matthew 11:30 Jesus says, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” A yoke joined two animals so they could pull a plough together — far better than one alone, and often a more experienced animal was paired with a younger one.

Jesus is saying: link up with me and I will pull with you. But notice — there is still a yoke. He did not say the burden is non-existent. He said it is light. There is still a burden. He is simply saying He will carry it with you.

And to have that, you have to trust Him with all your heart and stop leaning your weight on your own understanding — because that is trying to pull the plough alone. Lean on His, and let Him pull with you. As you do, rocks get kicked out, weeds get uprooted, and things go a little smoother. The problems are not removed. You simply are not doing it by yourself.

And Then Do It Again Tomorrow

On day 19, one of our own wrote this in the devotional:

Surrender your plans. Surrender your ego, your fears, your doubt. All of it. Then do it again the next day.

That is exactly what Solomon is calling us to. Trust in the Lord with all your heart — then do it the next day. Lean not on your own understanding — then do it the next day. In all your ways acknowledge Him — and do it the next day.

Do that day in and day out, surrendering continually, and He will make your path straighter and smoother. You will find more joy. And you will find yourself making far fewer rational decisions that lead you into irrational trouble.

Some of us have been through hard things — places where we tried to trust God and He did not come through the way we thought He should. It is genuinely hard to trust after that. So the prayer is that He would help us see He may have had a better idea, a better way, a greater understanding than ours — and that we may have been wrong not to trust Him.

Not merely to lean against Him, but to lie flat and let Him carry us. Let Him heal us, repair us, and make us more like Christ.