Magnificent Surrender

Releasing the Riches of Living in the Lord

Helland

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781621891468
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

God's kingdom is our true home, but we've picked up a habit of resisting it. And when, finally, we do fall in, most of us find we've survived so long outside his kingdom that we've lost all instinct for thriving in it. That's where Roger Helland meets us. Roger has thought long and studied hard on these matters. He has pondered deeply what it means to be fully alive in Christ and for Christ, and he's tested his insights in classrooms, in churches, with denominations, but mostly in his own life. In Magnificent Surrender, he's distilled what he's learned into a field guide for kingdom living.But Roger draws from an even deeper source. His book derives its force and depth from Paul's letter to the Colossians. Indeed, Magnificent Surrender is an extended pastoral reflection on and application of that letter. Colossians, in four brief chapters, presents the glory of Jesus Christ and the glory of a life wholly submitted to him. It is a manifesto of the rich life.Magnificent Surrender heralds that brilliantly. It's a wise, loving, and sometimes stern invitation to read Colossians again, with fresh eyes and fierce resolve. It's also a challenge to take to heart its promise and its exhortation--that we can and must live in, through, with, and for Christ, who is all and in all, supreme and sufficient.-Mark Buchanan, from the Foreword

1

Faith and Fruit

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain
in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5, NLT)

I lived in Kelowna with my wife and our three children for twenty-two glorious years. A thriving city of 110,000, Kelowna sits gracefully like a solitaire diamond on beautiful Lake Okanagan in the British Columbia interior, four hours east of Vancouver. The lake is home to the legendary Loch Ness-type creature called Ogopogo. Kelowna is a picturesque life giving “staycation,” tourist, and retirement hub with moderate climate and multiple outdoor activities. In 1859 a Catholic priest named Father Pandosy and a small group of oblates established the first settlement of white people there—now known as Father Pandosy’s Mission—southeast of downtown Kelowna. They offered healing and hope to the area’s Indian and growing settler populations. As a former mission outpost, Kelowna now radiates two redemptive features: 1) faith—it’s home to many strong churches and Christian-led businesses like the Society of Hope (which develops low cost housing), and Club Penguin (a children’s interactive website); and 2) fruit—it’s home to numerous wineries, orchards, and the Sun-Rype fruit juice manufacturing company. What you see in the spiritual (faith) is what you see in the natural (fruit).

Our family enjoyed some of the most succulent peaches, cherries, and apples in the world. Kelowna and the entire Okanagan Valley produce world-class fruitfulness. God is into fruit. The opening chapters of Genesis show God’s design for the fruitfulness of both creation and the human race. He crafted the Garden of Eden and the tree of life to offer good and pleasing fruit for Adam and Eve. He also commanded the first couple to be fruitful and multiply. In the Old Testament, God considered Israel his vineyard and he expected fruitfulness from his people. In the same way, Jesus uses the vine and branches metaphor to depict the vital union between he and his followers where he expects and empowers much fruit in them (John 15:1–17).

What is the one practice, which you must cultivate and use to bear succulent spiritual fruit in your life in the Lord? Pray? Worship? Read Scripture? Serve God? Attend church? Nope. There’s something more difficult and formidable. Without it, you can’t bear spiritual fruit. It’s faith. We know that “without faith it’s impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6). For some, faith is a word about optimism: “Just have faith!” In Scripture, faith is a word about confidence. Observe Colossians 1:3–6. Note the vital connection between faith and fruit:

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints—the faith and love that spring from the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth, the gospel that has come to you. All over the world this gospel is bearing fruit and growing, just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and understood God’s grace in all its truth.

Theological Virtues

Like the wardrobe that transported four children into the enchanted world of Narnia where “Aslan is on the move,” faith transports us all into the enchanted world of God’s kingdom where the “gospel is on the move.” This gospel, received by faith in Christ Jesus, comes to people among people, as it bears fruit and grows all over the world. Since its inception, Christianity has been the most aggressive spiritual movement on earth. The Gospel trumpets the word of truth—saturated with grace—which we always need to hear. Even as inspiration can come through hearing our favorite artist on the radio, we must continue to believe that faith comes through hearing the word of God (Rom 10:17). As we hear God’s word, it sustains our faith. A.W. Tozer reminds us, “Faith comes first to the hearing ear, not to the cogitating mind.”1

Christian faith isn’t a stationary set of doctrines or creeds that we merely affirm intellectually. Rather, it’s a dynamic trust in the person of Jesus Christ. Recently, I read Peter Vardy’s An Introduction to Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard views faith as existential. He posits that a person must continuously choose to stake their life on a truth claim about Jesus Christ (God in flesh) that reason might otherwise reject. This requires that we choose and think in a dynamic rather than in a static way. It is subjective and not purely intellectual or objective. To illustrate it, Vardy mentions a scene from the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). He writes:

Jones is seeking the Holy Grail—the cup from which Jesus is supposed to have drunk wine at the Last Supper. Nazis who are also seeking the Grail capture him and his father is seriously injured. The only hope of saving his father is to find the Grail. Indiana Jones evaded the Nazis and raced down an underground cavern at the end of which, a secret map has told him where the Grail is located. He comes to a halt before a huge precipice of immeasurable depth. On the other side of this chasm is the Holy Grail. The map tells him that if he steps out over the chasm a hidden bridge will appear. He cannot test whether the bridge is there or not—he has to stake his whole life on his belief that the bridge exists though there is no guarantee that it does. Jones is required to have faith that the bridge exists. This is not simply intellectual faith. He has to stake his life on the existence of the bridge by putting all his weight on it. If the bridge does not appear he will fall to the bottom of the chasm and die. In a similar way, for Kierkegaard, faith requires individuals to stake their lives on a claim (the incarnation) that may or may not be true. Faith, therefore, is an existential act.2

When Scottish missionary John G. Paton translated Scripture into the language of the Gaelic tribes in the New Hebrides islands, he searched for an exact word to translate faith. After a diligent search, he discovered the right word. It meant: “lean your whole weight upon.” Living in the Lord does not mean: “Just have faith,” or “I hope things work out.” To have biblical faith is to place your trust in Christ Jesus. To place your trust in Christ Jesus, as Lord, is to believe him as you lean your whole life upon him as you would lean against a wall. It’s to acknowledge him as sovereign in your heart, not as an abstract doctrine in your head.

Faith includes surrender. Paul Little wrote two well-known books, Know What You Believe and Know Why You Believe. Recently, his wife collected and edited his writings to compile a final book entitled, Know Who You Believe. When we know who we believe, his sovereign love charms our hearts into magnificent surrender. Who is Jesus Christ? Is he the Lord and Savior on whom we lean our faith practically, or is he a doctrine or a theological subject we believe and study intellectually?

Righteous people live by faith (Rom 1:17), not sight (2 Cor 5:7). This is a one-time decision to trust Christ as Savior for forgiveness and eternal life because he’s trustworthy as Messiah. It’s also a repeated decision to trust Christ for guidance and destiny in life because he’s trustworthy as Lord. The New Living Translation puts it this way, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.” It’s with assurance and actions of hopeful trust that a person in right relationship to God shall live and have life. Have a careful read of Hebrews 11—the “hall of faith”—that offers a compelling survey of ancients whom God commends. The key repeated phrase in this chapter is, by faith . . . You’ll notice what each ancient did by faith. By faith Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain; by faith Noah built an ark; by faith Abraham obeyed and went to a place in which he did not know where he was going; by faith the people passed through the Red Sea; by faith Rahab the prostitute welcomed the spies—all commended for their faith.

I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to live by faith. I’m a task-oriented person who likes to make things happen and see results. I grew up with the humanistic philosophy that “you can accomplish whatever you set your mind to” and “God helps those who help themselves.” I’ve since learned this is bad theology. But, sometimes it feels like God isn’t doing anything. I have to make an important decision. So, I pray, I wait on God, I talk to my wife, I try to “hear God’s voice,” I think, and then . . . nothing . . . more questions and anxiety. Like a restless child in the back seat whining: “Are we there yet?” I can feel impatient and faithless.

And then I read, “The apostles said to the Lord, ‘Increase our faith!’ Jesus replied, ‘If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you’” (Luke 17:5–6). OK, so all I need is mustard seed-sized faith to move deep-rooted situations in my life. I’m encouraged because the apostles also needed a faith increase. They couldn’t see how to forgive someone seven times a day. For years I refused to forgive my father just once. While I was a PhD student in Montréal at McGill University, my wife helped me with that! But I’m also discouraged because I have a real mustard seed in a little baggie on a bookshelf in my home office, to remind me to increase my faith. It doesn’t! It’s tiny, and I can’t seem to trust Christ, even in tiny ways? Someone said, “If you think it takes size to be effective you’ve never been to bed with a mosquito!” The kingdom of God works like a tiny mustard seed. Hudson Taylor labeled faith as the “exchanged life.” He mused, “But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.”3

When we rest our faith on the immovable Rock of Gibraltar Christ as Lord, the century-long curse of perpetual winter cast by the evil white witch over our own personal Narnia is broken. We can then serve as members of God’s royal priesthood as kings and queens, where faith leads a threesome of theological virtues called faith, love, and hope. These become the charter for kingdom living in the Lord. Paul and Timothy thanked God when they prayed for the Colossians because they had heard that faith, love, and hope were active and growing among them as a church. Paul also showcased these theological virtues in his letters to the Corinthians (1 Cor 13:13) and to the Thessalonians (1 Thess 1:3).

Paul heard of the faith the Colossians had in Christ but also of the love they had for all the saints (1:4). He also noted this virtue about the Ephesians (Eph 1:15) and Philemon (Phlm 5). Faith, love, and hope are theological virtues, as they find their source and substance in God— foundations for our moral life of virtue. When Christians love one another, they prove that they are disciples of Jesus (John 13:35). What would it mean to love all the believers in your church, even difficult people? What would it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Jon Stewart remarked, “Remember to love your neighbor as you love yourself. And if you hate yourself, then please—just leave your neighbor alone!”4 What if Christians loved others the way God intended?

Friends of ours, Daniel and Laurie, pastor at Mountain Springs Church in Colorado Springs. Burdened by God’s love for others, they, along with the other pastors and leaders, helped launch a church-wide mission to their local community called Impact: Revolution of Love. It is part of their overall vision for the church to “live the mission” of Jesus by serving others in tangible ways. They cancel the weekend worship services a couple of times per year. The entire weekend becomes worship through service in the community where people sign up and are sent out on organized missions to help and love needy people in practical ways.

Donna Lowe, whom I know from a church where I pastored in Kelowna, wrote Radical Love. She posted this on Facebook: “When God’s love radically changes us, we become empowered to love others. It starts with our hearts, and then proves God’s existence to others. Alone, you will have an effect. Imagine, however, if we all joined together in one heart and one mind to bear witness to the world that God’s love (like no other love), will forever change them.”

In our book Missional Spirituality: Embodying God’s Love From the Inside Out, Len Hjalmarson and I unpack the meaning and offer practices in how we can love our Lord God from all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as our self. It starts with our hearts. We define missional spirituality as: “an attentive and active engagement of embodied love for God and neighbor expressed from the inside out.”5 Christian spirituality is relational. When we live by the Spirit we are spiritual. To grow spirit...

Table of contents

• Magnificent Surrender
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction: Jesus Is Lord
• Chapter 1: Faith and Fruit
• Chapter 2: He Is . . .
• Chapter 3: Living in the Lord
• Chapter 4: Christians and Culture
• Chapter 5: Heavenly Minded for Earthly Good
• Chapter 6: Christian Clothing
• Chapter 7: Open Eyes and Open Doors
• Chapter 8: Friends and Fellows
• Conclusion: Jesus Is Life
• Bibliography
• About the Author