Scott Couey

How do surrender and love work together?

We often hear the word love used in many different contexts. “I love hamburgers!” “I love the color blue!” “I love my family!”  “I love my church!” What is the true definition of love and how does surrender come into play with this definition? Upon the recommendation of a friend/mentor, I read the book Surrender to Love by David G. Benner. When I started this book, I honestly didn’t know what to expect as I had never heard of the author.

The book is a trilogy of sorts (the second book being The Gift of Being Yourself and the third book being Desiring God’s Will). In Surrender to Love, Benner discusses the concept of Godly love and how the ultimate surrender (the death of Jesus Christ, God’s only son) provides this love for us. We have a tendency to believe that God loves us based on our merits…if we do well then God loves us more…if we don’t do well morally then God doesn’t love us as much. This concept has caused many a people to fear God in an unhealthy way. God loves us regardless of what we do. He may be disappointed in us, but that doesn’t mean He loves us any less.

I walked away from reading this book with a better sense of what true love means and that you must have some sort of surrender in order to have that true love, or it isn’t really true love. This book was an easy read and I had no problem understanding the terminology and illustrations the author used. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in the concept of love and/or surrender.

Here are a few takeaways that I had from the book:

• “Love is God’s character, not simply an emotion.”
• “The Christian God doesn’t turn away from sinners in disgust but moves toward us, bringing us His redemptive presence.”
• “The story of Jesus is the story of love personified.”
• “Most of us who call ourselves Christians do so on the basis of belief more than experience.” – A. W. Tozer
• “God isn’t simply the projection of our own image on the cosmos.”
• “He (God) created us and knows us intimately…He knows how we respond to anything that threatens our need for control.”

Photo Credit: By Amazon.com