Singer-songwriter Laura Storey has come to realize there's a difference between trying to be in control of your own life and living a surrendered life. Anytime she forgets that, she says, she just goes back to the Bible. I keep going back to the Psalms. The Psalms talking about the greatness of God and, you know, what is man that he will be mindful of. He's like, once we realize that really it's kind of silly for us to be kind of co-ruling with him. And it's not that he doesn't invite us into it because he constantly, in his words, talking about us being part of his work. But it's us laying down, we're part of it by laying down our desire.
I mean, like Jesus in the garden says, you know, not my will, but yours be done. And that's the posture we need to take as believers. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com.
Do you ever have a problem with surrendering, with letting go, with loosening your grip on your agenda and surrendering to God's plan for your life? We're going to talk more about that today with Laura Storey. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. We had a treat when Laura Storey, the Dove Award-winning singer-songwriter who has written such songs as Indescribable and the song Blessings and other songs, she stopped by our headquarters here at Family Life and we got the staff together and we talked with her and she sang some songs for us. And it was a delightful time, wasn't it? She's amazing. And she's so great. She pulls in in this van and her kids all come out and she comes out. But she's honest and real.
I think listeners are going to love this today. And as you'll hear, there's a depth to her life and her soul. I mean, it was funny watching her roll out. The kids just sort of plopped out and rolled all over and they ran into the child care and then she walks in and just shares her heart.
It was beautiful. Yeah. And before we hear from her, this is, of course, Christmas week. Next week is the last week of the year. And David Robbins, the president of Family Life, has got a reminder for Family Life Today listeners.
David? I want to start off by saying thank you. You've invested time and many of you have invested financially with our ministry. You've made Family Life Today possible for truly millions of people who are tuned in each week to find the help and hope for their family. In fact, I've got to share with you a message that I received from Jane, who's one of our regular listeners, and she told us, family life today was so encouraging at one of the most difficult times in my marriage.
I felt so isolated and weary. The episode Hope Isn't Cancelled was truly a godsend when I needed it most when COVID-19 was at its peak. It is truly a blessing to hear the specific ways God meets his people and uses family life. If you want to help create and spread hope like this, I encourage you to consider donating to family life as we're nearing the end of December and 2020. We're watching the donations coming in right now and we're running behind where we need to be. And with our donation match this month, your dollars will be doubled in impact. Thank you for considering a gift of any amount to help. Each and every gift will help us meet our goal and will help us continue to minister to families in the year ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, David. And I hope our listeners will go to our website familylifetoday.com and make a generous year-end donation or call us at 1-800-FL-TODAY and pray for us that our needs will be met in the year to come. Now, let's turn to the conversation we had recently with Laura Storey. We talked with her about the theme of surrender, which is a theme of a book she's written called I Give Up. And in our conversation, I asked her a question about her book.
I think I found a mistake. On the back cover it says, Laura no longer wants to control her life. What it meant to say is Laura has found that trying to control her life is futile. It does go on to say she wants to be rooted in the God who is in control, and that's true. The idea of surrender, we tend to think of somebody coming to faith in Christ.
That's what they do. They surrender their lives to Christ. A one-time thing. And then it's over and then you move on. Surrender is a daily process.
Absolutely. It's constantly choosing surrender for every moment, always with our time, with our money, with our family, with our children, with our job, whatever it is. Whatever it is that God begins to eliminate in your life that you're holding too tightly to. Because for me, if there's something I find myself frustrated that it's just not working out the way that I think it should, usually it's God showing me that my grip on that thing or that person that I'm trying to manage, that that grip is a little too tight. And I hate that, don't you?
Oh, yeah. I want the other one. I surrender once, it's done, there's no more trials, and yet every day is a little bit of prying the hand off of something I'm trying to control. Here's what I find myself wrestling with, the difference between surrender and passivity. Trying to figure out when am I supposed to yield and when am I supposed to step forward and not yield and push back.
Do you have an answer for me on that? No, I think surrender, really what we're asking, or what God is asking is for us to surrender the things that He is supposed to be in control of that we're trying to be in control of. There's a ton of things that are our jobs. Let's say the person that's unemployed, if they just sit in bed every day and watch television because they're just going to surrender. And take out Bring Me the Job.
They're just going to surrender that to the Lord. But actually, there's so many things that we can, in most of these arenas, there's so many things that we can be doing. But at the end of the day, we have to come to a point of saying, I have done my job, but I'm going to trust Him.
And what that looks like, in a very tangible, practical way, is I can go to bed at night and sleep peacefully. I don't have to be up wringing my hands over whether or not God is going to come through on His part. Throughout the book, you've got white flag prayers.
Yes. So did the prayers come first before the chapters came? I kind of read these and thought, I bet these are all prayers that you've prayed over and over again. Let me give an example of one of those prayers.
White flag prayer. Number two. Number two. God, I don't want to compete with you for control of my life.
You know me. All my fears, impatience, and at times, even my unbelief. Holy God, creator of the universe, help me to daily surrender to you as the Lord of my life. So as to Bob's questions, did the prayer come first or the chapter come first? Well, the chapters came first, and each chapter presents everything from reasons why we should surrender to how to surrender. And I think at the end of each chapter, if you as a reader could look back and go, yeah, I think I agree with that. I think I agree with God being trustworthy enough for me to surrender. I wanted to give the reader a step that they could just do in that very moment. You know, nothing that would take more than 15 seconds.
And all of it is supposed to be like a thousand little steps. Surrender. It's not this it's like surrender and forgiveness are very they're like second cousins. Forgiveness.
You can say, oh, I forgive that person. But really what it is, is you saying I forgive that person and I'm going to make the choice every time they come to mind to forgive them a thousand little times. And that's what surrender looks like.
It's saying I want to want to surrender. And those white flag prayers I'm hoping are going to be a thousand little steps towards that. The filling of the Holy Spirit is a continuous activity, right? We are to continuously be being filled with the Spirit. So in the same way that every moment we're to walk in the power of the Spirit, every moment we're to be forgiving, every moment we're to be surrendering.
And it is an ongoing process. That white flag prayer comes at the end of chapter two. Can I just read the title of chapter two? Dear God, let's be co-rulers. Love me.
I know it was a very vulnerable book. Yeah, because I live that way. I am totally fine with surrendering to God if he is doing it my way. I am really good at surrendering. I'm like that passenger that, like I really like to drive. I don't know, I feel like I'm kind of like a guy in that sense.
Me too. I really want to drive and I don't, and I have trouble trusting the person that's driving and I'm always looking over their shoulder saying, hey, you know, you could take that way and it would be a little bit quicker or don't you think you maybe should? Are you saying you have a control problem? Slightly. My wife never does that.
No, never. I don't know where you get that. And the truth is, the only reason why we would be that way towards God is if we really believed that he needed our help. That we know better than he does? Yes, which shows both an inflated view of self and a deflated view of God.
If we really saw, I keep going back to the Psalms, just because so much of this book, especially as a worship leader, I'm just kind of enamored with the Psalms, but the Psalms talking about the greatness of God and what is man that he will be mindful of. Once we realize that really it's kind of silly for us to be kind of co-ruling with him. And it's not that he doesn't invite us into it because he constantly, in his words, talking about us being part of his work, but it's us laying down, we're part of it by laying down our desire. I mean, like Jesus in the garden says, you know, not my will, but yours be done. And that's the posture we need to take as believers.
And that's not always easy and I think it looks different sometimes. Sometimes it's an emotional, I remember the first time I told Jesus, I am all in. I surrender everything. I will go, it's this passion, like I'm going to follow you. And there were other times, my sister died when I was 39, my best friend, she left four boys. And it was one of those times where I knelt before God and I said, I see no sense in this.
This is the dumbest thing. Like, why would you do this? And so that surrender was, I will follow you as an act of my will. Not because I'm feeling so great about you, but I will follow you because I know you're faithful and I can trust you even when it doesn't feel like it right now. And so it can be different times, but it's still that act of surrender. I think about when the crowds went away from Jesus and he looked at the disciples and says, you leaving too? And they said, where else do we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. And in those moments where we look and we say, I don't get this and this does not make sense to me, we also find ourselves saying, but where else do we go? Where else would I go?
Who else can we follow? You have been so gracious in the midst that even in adversity, there's no place else to go where life has purpose or meaning or makes any sense. And so even though this doesn't make sense, you make more sense than anything else we know. And yet in the middle of that, as we all know, it's still hard to pick up that white flag. It's like I still want to maintain a sense of I can.
And yet this move at the end of each chapter is a surrender move. I am surrendering my will to your will. Tell Laura about what you did at church a couple of months ago related to control issues and the bicycle.
I didn't do anything, Bob. My wife did this. We're doing a message together and she says, we got to bring the tandem bike to church. We have this bike that hangs in our garage. It's never been ridden in 25 years. I always want to sell it. She will not let me sell it.
It's a relic. And so I have to pull this thing down. Can you bring the tandem to church today?
He goes, why? And I said, I feel like I have this idea of what I would like to. I've learned. Just do it.
I'm a visual learner. Surrender. Surrender. So I brought this tandem on the stage and I said, I didn't grow up in church. And so my sister had told me, came home, told me about Jesus. And she said, Anne, like, this is how we receive eternal life.
God longs for us to have a relationship with him. And so I got on the tandem bike on the front of it and I said, Jesus, get on. Like, get on the back. So I'm Jesus.
I find out during the sermon. So I get on the back to pretend I'm Jesus. And I go the same ways.
I've always gone and I've done the same things I always did. And now I'm feeling guilty because Jesus is on the back and he sees me. And I feel like he's saying, let me take you.
Let me in the front. Let me guide your life and take you on this journey. And that's a fearful thing to let him take us somewhere. Because we don't know where he's going to take us. We could marry a pastor. I know. We could live in Detroit, Michigan.
Find yourself on a radio show. Exactly. And so when I let Jesus get on the front and take my life, at first it's like, this is amazing. Look, he's leading me. He's guiding me.
I'm going to follow him. But then he takes us on some paths that we never expected or wanted. And then on the tandem bike, I get on those handlebars, on my handlebars, and I start leaning over Jesus, trying to get those handlebars and saying, don't go this way. And I'm trying to... She actually sat on my head on the bike in the middle of the sermon trying to control me.
But that's the hardest thing, to let him have that driver's seat. And believing that surrender isn't supposed to be this frustrating thing, but it really is a freeing thing. I think one of the things about surrender, people have this image of surrender being like Elsa on the mountainside.
Let it go. As if we just throw our problems into thin air and everything just gets better. And the truth is, that is not biblical surrender at all. Because, first of all, the things in our lives, they're not these light things that we can just throw up into thin air and they disappear.
Things like cancer, things like infertility, things like addictions. Those are weighty things. And so what biblical surrender actually looks like is it's looking at the things in our life that we try to carry that are heavy and looking at our own hands and seeing these frail, selfish hands that often fumble and making a conscious choice and a very rational choice to trust those things into greater, stronger, more trustworthy, more loving hands. That really is more what a biblical picture of surrender looks like. You wrote a song about this recently and Mac Powell sang it with you.
Yes, this was kind of the beginning of the Lord doing this painful work in my life. And I listened to this last night and I thought, oh, we'll have Lord do it. I'll do the Mac Powell part. And then I played it and I said, no, I won't do the Mac Powell part.
I tried doing the Mac Powell part and it was a traitor. So you'll do the whole thing, okay? Okay, we can do that.
Yeah, let's do that. The sweetest sound, the highest praise is the letting go of this life you gave my greatest prayer. My act of faith is an open hand, would have a way to take it all, every hope, every dream, every plan, take it all, every weight, all the shame and brokenness, Jesus, I surrender all, every victory and loss. Take it all, take it all, till all I have is open hands.
Cause a clenching fist and a life of fear, a burden held has no place here. As you call me now to cast it all on the shoulders of the one who's strong, take it all, every hope, every dream, every plan, take it all, every weight, all the shame and brokenness, Jesus, I surrender all, every victory and loss. Take it all, take it all, till all I have is open hands, cause all I have is open hands. Oh, I'm not afraid of what I lose, my greatest joy is finding you. I'm not afraid of what I lose, my greatest joy is finding you, is finding you. So take it all, take it all, take it all, every hope, every dream, every plan, take it all, every weight, all the shame and brokenness, Jesus, I surrender all, every victory and loss. Take it all, take it all, till all I have is open hands. Cause all I have is open hands, I surrender till all I have is open hands. And Laura, take a minute here and just pray for those who need to surrender today, who are trying to climb over from the backseat into the steering position and say, I want to control and just need to let go and let the Lord direct their lives. Would you pray for them?
Yeah. Father, we acknowledge that too often we buy into the lie of the world that tells us that we must be independent and self-sufficient, that we must be strong. And we acknowledge now that what we have in you because of your son, we are able to be weak. You call us to dependence and you call us to surrender. So for each person who struggles now trying to carry something weighty that they were never meant to bear, give us the faith in you, our trustworthy God, to lay it down. We visualize it now going from our hands to yours, God. We trust you and we thank you that you are a God who delights in doing exceedingly more than we could ever ask or imagine for our good and for your greater glory.
We pray in the name of Jesus. Amen. Would you guys thank Laura Storey for being here?
Thank you guys. We've been listening back to an interview with Laura Storey done with our staff here at Family Life. And I think there are a lot of people who can relate to the need to surrender, to give up, the desire to want to control all the details of your life. Do you deal with that control issues? I keep waiting for my desire to control to go away, but it never seems to, Bob. And I think that's part of the human condition. I think all of us feel safer if we feel like we're in control, but control's an illusion, isn't it?
Yeah, and I love the line in the song, Open Hands, she just sang. It's the line, a clenching fist, a life of fear. And I'm a clenching fist guy. You know, I hold on and I want to hold on, and it's really hard to open the hand and say, okay, I'm going to trust God.
But he can be trusted, but it's really difficult. I don't think we can experience all God has for us until we do unclench that fist and give him everything, because that's when the journey really begins and the adventure with God. Well, I think there are times God says, okay, if you want to hang on, hang on, we'll see where this goes. And the life of surrender, it's a little like skydiving, which I've never done. Have you ever skydived? Never have. I sort of want to.
I want to, too. I'm holding on to my fist. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to hold on to the plane.
I'm going to hold on to that anchor. I think God says, when you let go, where I'm going to take you is going to be glorious. And yeah, it may be scary for a while, but. And not always easy. Right. I've said this, I've seen this written, the visual of if you have your fist closed, you can't put anything into it.
Right. And it really is true, until you let go and trust God, you don't know what he might have for you, and it might just be peace. Yeah, and I think that's the conclusion that Laura comes to in the book that she's written called I Give Up. The subtitle is The Secret Joy of a Surrendered Life.
There is peace when you surrender to God and to his purposes and his will. We've got copies of Laura's book in our Family Life Today Resource Center. Let me encourage you to go online to order your copy.
Again, the title is I Give Up by Laura Storey. Our website is familylifetoday.com. The number to call to order is 1-800-FL-TODAY. Again, you can order online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call to order 1-800-358-6329.
That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. We talked back at the beginning of today's program about this being year-end, Family Life's year-end financial need, the matching gift that is available so that your donations get matched dollar for dollar. We didn't mention the fact that when you make a donation here at year-end, we want to say thank you by sending you a couple of resources that are our gift to you in exchange for your support of this ministry. One of the gifts we'll send you is my book Love Like You Mean It.
That's all about what the Bible teaches about what real love is supposed to look like in a marriage relationship. The other gift is a flash drive that has more than 100 of the best Family Life Today programs over the last 28 years, programs with Dennis and Barbara Rainey, with Dave and Ann Wilson, with guests we've had on talking about marriage, talking about parenting, about relationships. You'll receive the flash drive and the book as our thank you gift when you make a year-end donation right now, and your donation will be matched dollar for dollar. Again, you can donate online at familylifetoday.com, or you can call to donate.
1-800-FL-TODAY is the number. Thanks in advance for whatever you're able to do to help us here at year-end. We hope you can join us again tomorrow when Josh and Christy Straub are going to be here to talk about our kids and how we help them develop emotional intelligence, emotional understanding, how we help them put words to what they're feeling. I hope you can tune in for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
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