The pursuit of love and esteem is easily—and all too often—christianized by simply mixing in large doses of church activities and religious behavior into our already busy lives to form a new, and hopefully valued morality. But this christianized life probably looks more like the lives of Pharisees than the life Jesus invited us to live.
How do you distinguish, in your life, the difference between this kind of christian performance and holy obedience? Some indications that it’s more ambition than spiritual might be:
- needing to control
- persistent anxiousness
- competing or comparing
- being fearful of being found out
- lack of peace or contentment
- often wondering what people think of me
- fear of failing or disappointing
What tips you off that a constructed personality may still be in power?
In our group we’ve had some push back that Miller’s Builders generation was more prone to ambition and wearing masks than more current generations. That’s probably true. But it’s probably also true that every generation is tempted to build personalities that their generation will find attractive and worthy of love and respect. What are some personality traits that might be tempting to put on in your context?
We’ve talked about the prison that pursuit puts our soul in. Miller claims the only way out of that prison, the only route to freedom is through an absolute surrender of the constructed personality and the soul to God. Paul Tournier compares that act of surrender to a trapeze artist swinging from one trapeze to the other. What does that require…from the trapeze artist and from us?
That moment of surrender is sometimes called a crisis of trust, and the truth is life is a series of crises. Why is it so hard for us to surrender?
What are the hardest pieces in your life to surrender?
How do you know when you’ve truly surrendered?
Have you had an experience of full surrender you could describe?
What did you experience? Fresh intimacy? A visceral sense of forgiveness? Greater clarity of purpose or meaning? A more durable sense of security? Feeling loved for who you really are? An ability to let go of the need to control? Something else?
Internal and external voices will tell us that surrender is a sign of weakness. Paul tells us something different in 2 Corinthians 12:9. How does that verse inform this conversation?
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
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4 comments:
i would LOVE to be in that discussion with you all! Surrender is ultimately an act of aligning with reality. Who am i kidding to think that I can live independently? Surrender is admitting that He rules and allowing Him to reign in me- being connected (John 15)is how we were designed. if i'm disconnected, i'm dysfunctional. Surrender is fully functional, the complete intended design. I remember hearing of a (secular) book called "surrender, the path to victory" or something like that. Wow! that's us!
This shift from recognizing our "constructed personality" to surrendering it is probably the hardest transition to actually LIVE. I've found myself, now very aware of my constructed personality tendencies, slipping back into relying on my own strength, ability, and control to gain acceptance from others. Its one thing to say we believe that God's grace is sufficient for us and His power is made perfect in our weakness....its another thing to actually LIVE in that grace and power and surrender.... Lord, help me!
-C
oops, I was signed in as Derek. :) That last post was from Christiana. :)
I think my biggest take-away from the whole book is the idea (the reality I think) that we are being progressively saved as we incrementally discover and surrender our true selves to God. I agree with Miller: what most of us have done is offered God our constructed lives and trusted God would take that. But when we begin to offer our real souls to God (as we incrementally get to know our true souls) we begin to understand what Paul probably meant when he said to "work out your salvation with fear and trembling."
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