The Heart of Worship: Learning to Surrender When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned
Reflections on Chapter Ten of The Purpose Driven Life
At 39, sitting in my 950-square-foot apartment with my fiancé and our children, I find myself wrestling with a question that has haunted me since childhood: Why does life have to be such struggle?
The walls around me tell a story of dreams deferred and plans that didn’t quite work out. If left my “good paying” job to pursue life coaching; work that pays me exactly $0 at this very moment. My fiancé, also an entrepreneur, carries the financial weight while I chase what I believe is my calling. Some days, when the apartment’s aging systems break down again and again, I catch myself asking God why struggle seems to be the only constant in my life.
The Seeds of Ambition
My relationship with money and security was forged in the fires of childhood poverty. I watched my hardworking mother juggle two kids, a full-time job, and a mortgage that she couldn’t quite manage alone. When she trusted the wrong man who took advantage of her generous heart, we lost our home. That day, sleeping in the back room of my friend’s parent’s house, I made myself a promise. I would never be powerless again.
That promise became my driving force. I would work hard for the nicer things, cars, clothes, homes, travel, the ability to provide for my children. I collected achievements like armor: an associates degree, a cosmetology license, decent paying jobs, marriage. Yet none of it felt sustainable. None of it brought the security I craved. Success always seemed tied to other people’s character, other people’s decisions, and other people’s failures.
The divorce came. The disillusionment followed. And here I am wondering if this cycle of striving and struggling is all God has planned for my life.
The Unpopular Truth About Surrender
In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren writes something that made my heart recoil: “Surrender is an unpopular word, disliked almost as much as the word submission. It implies losing, and no one wants to be a loser.”
As someone who has felt like a loser more times than I care to count, the idea of choosing to surrender feels counterintuitive. We live in a culture that celebrates winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering. Surrendering feels like giving up, like admitting defeat.
But Warren challenges this thinking: “Surrendering to God is the heart of worship.”
This isn’t about waving a white flag in defeat. It’s about something far more radical. Offering our entire lives as a “a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him” (Romans 12:1). It’s about recognizing that true worship is’t just about singing songs on Sunday morning; it’s giving God access to every area of our lives, including our deepest fears about money, security, and success.
The Barriers We Build
Warren identifies three barriers that block our total surrender: fear, pride, and confusion. Looking at my own life, I see all three operating like security systems protecting my heart from what feels like inevitable disappointment.
Fear tells me that if I truly let go, I’ll end up homeless again. It reminds me to every time I trusted and got hurt, every plan that fell through, every person who let me down. Fear says surrender is just another word for being a victim.
Pride tells me I should be able to figure this out on my own. After all, I have a bachelor’s degree, experience, and intelligence. Pride insists that needing help, even from God, is somehow shameful. It’s the same voice that made Adam and Eve believe they could “be like God.” (Genesis 3:5).
Confusion clouds my understanding of what surrender actually means. Does it mean accepting poverty? Does it mean giving up my dreams? Does it mean becoming passive in the face of injustice?
What Surrender Actually Looks Like
The more I study Scripture and examine my own heart, the more I realize how severely I’ve misunderstood surrender. It’s not passive resignation or an excuse for laziness, C.S. Lewis put it this way, “The more we let God take over, the more truly ourselves we become, because he made us.”
Surrender isn’t about becoming a doormat, or placemat; it’s about becoming authentic. It’s not about giving up our personalities; it’s about discovering who we were always meant to be.
Jesus himself modeled this kind of surrender in Gethsemane when he prayed, “Father, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will, not mine.” (Mark 14:36). He didn’t surrender because he was weak, he surrendered because he trusted his Father’s heart.
The Daily Choice
A.W. Tozer said “The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves.” This hits uncomfortably close to home for me. How do I come to the end of myself? How do I stop trying to control outcomes that were never mine to control in the first place?
The answer, I’m learning, is that surrender isn’t a one-time event. Paul puts it this way “I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31). As Warren notes, “The problem with living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar.” Some days I need to surrender my life fifty times over.
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The Promise of Peace
What does genuine surrender offer in return you ask? Warren points to three incredible benefits: peace, freedom, and God’s power working in our lives.
The Bible says “Stop quarreling with God! If you agree with him, you will have peace at last, and things will go well for you.” (Job 22:21). This kind of peace isn’t dependent on circumstances, it’s rooted in trust that God’s plans are better than our backup plans.
Living the Questions
As I write this, I still don’t have answers to all my questions about money, ministry, and God’s timeline for my life. But' I’m beginning to understand that the questions themselves might be part of the journey. Maybe financial struggle isn’t a sign of God’s displeasure but an invitation to trust him in ways prosperity never could have taught me.
Maybe the heart of worship isn’t found in having all of our ducks in a row but in offering our messy, complicated, uncertain lives to the One who sees the bigger picture. El Roi, the God who sees me.
The question Warren poses captures this for me in the best way possible, he says, “What part of my life am I holding back from God?” For, me it’s my need to feel financially secure before I can fully embrace his calling. It’s my desire to control outcomes instead of trusting his process.
Today, in this small apartment with it’s quirky plumbing, and aging appliances, I’m learning that surrender might not change my circumstances overnight but it’s already changing me. And maybe that was always the point.
“Surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes.” - Romans 6:13
This reflection is part of my 40-day journey through The Purpose Driven Life. You can explore the full series here → Purpose Driven Life Hub
