After we healed our marriage from infidelity and started sharing our story, we found that we could hardly keep up with the emails from others in a similar situation as us. Over the years, we’ve strived to be open and honest about the dysfunction that caused our marriage to spin out of control, as well as the work it takes to grow and heal—and it’s become clear that this is a struggle so many people resonate with.
As we’ve continued to offer guidance and resources to individuals and couples, there’s one selection of pages we’ve found ourselves sending out over and over again.
It’s actually an excerpt from the companion booklets we wrote for those dealing with infidelity in marriage. They’re called I Really Messed Up and My Heart is Broken. Specifically, we’ve found ourselves sending people one section that talks about surrender.
We can tend to think of surrender as a negative thing. We may hold false beliefs like:
If I surrender, I’ll be taken prisoner in some way.
Surrendering means letting go of my freedom and independence.
When someone surrenders, that means they’ve lost.
However, the reality is that surrender is the key to a successful life—it’s a personal victory, regardless of whether your current relationship status is married or single. If you are a believer, it’s also a vital part of the Christian walk. Without it, we can get stuck in our journey, succumb to anger, and develop a desire to control everything around us.
This topic is very close to our hearts. We’ve even talked about it on our podcast before:
We have shared the following pages with couples and individuals over and over again for a reason—they provide wisdom, encouragement, and a starting point to heal and repair relationships. Today, we want to share these with you!
The following is an excerpt from Chapter 3 of Mark’s book, I Really Messed Up:
CHAPTER THREE: YOUR HEART
Life during dark seasons is a kind of battlefield.
Maybe it’s felt like there’s a battle going on between you and your spouse, but that’s actually not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is the battle going on inside of you over who’s going to lead your life.
In fact, infidelity is evidence of the battle being won by you. You led. You decided. You allowed. You chose. You made a big mess. Now it’s time to let God lead.
That’s called surrender. It’s a position of your heart.
The battle going on inside of you is exhausting. I’m sure you’re feeling that in some way. You’ve been demanding your own way, being deceitful, blaming, covering your tracks, running away, and trying to fix things on your own. You may be feeling like you’re stuck in a rut and spinning your tires.
Throwing up the white flag of surrender may feel like a weakness to you, but it’s really a strength! Letting go of control and putting it in God’s hands is a relief but it takes courage.
What does “putting it in God’s hands” really mean? How do you live out surrender in a daily way that can not only heal your heart but increase the possibility of healing your marriage? Let’s take a look at what surrender actually means:
Surrender is Trusting God to Lead
I’m an ordained pastor. I would have told you that I understood surrender, but the truth is, I didn’t. Not until I blew up my life and marriage and had to come face to face with the reality that deep down I didn’t trust God.
The truth is God often disappointed me. Expectations, in general, fueled my discontent with life. My expectations in life, friendships, marriage, church, and with God consistently wavered on the unrealistic side of things. When you sit in unrealistic expectations day in and day out, you become discontent, disillusioned, discouraged, and eventually disconnected.
I wanted God to do things my way. I wanted Him to show up how I wanted Him to show up. I wanted Him to cater to my timing.
I want.
I want.
I want.
That’s what an unsurrendered life looks like.
When I threw up the white flag of surrender, my heart changed to “Whatever you want is best, Lord. I trust You.” It’s particularly hard to trust God when you don’t have the experience of a healthy, earthly Father. My parents divorced when I was two and my biological father rarely showed up for visits. I felt abandoned by him.
My stepfather was an angry, controlling, abusive, violent man. I felt shamed by him and was always waiting to be on the receiving end of his anger.
Without realizing it, I was placing the face of my fathers on the face of God. That kept me from being able to truly trust Him.
I said “Yes” to God at a Billy Graham crusade. I was in my early 20’s and I desperately needed to get my head and heart headed in a different direction. I accepted Christ as my Savior then, but I really didn’t understand the need for Him to be “Lord” of my life. In other words, I didn’t understand how to let Him be my leader. I argued with God. I told Him what I wanted Him to do. I demanded He do things my way. I demanded he let me live my life however I wanted to live it.
Sure there were times I let God lead, but in general I had a selfish, demanding heart rather than a humble, surrendered heart. In the next chapter we’ll talk about your actions and some of the actions you need to take to heal your marriage will go against what you FEEL like doing. The only way you can walk those actions out is with a humble, surrendered heart that lets God lead.
I knew I would have to walk through hard, but in surrender I was willing no matter the cost. The picture I have held to this day is this: I am a young boy holding the hand of Father God following His lead. I’m walking with my Daddy.
This was a new level of relationship for me with Daddy God (that’s what I call Him). Because I didn’t have a good earthly father, I saw God as uncaring, punishing, and disconnected. My inner lies about my value ran rampant inside of me as well. I believed even with God I wasn’t good enough. I was unworthy. He didn’t care about me. He lied like others. When I surrendered, though, I resolved all of this in one decision. I had to let it all go. I needed His help desperately. My friend…Daddy God showed up and helped me in huge, healing way as He led me out of the mess I’d made.
Surrender is Trusting God’s Ways Are Better
God doesn’t give us guidelines for life to be mean or bossy, or a fuddy-duddy. He gives us direction to protect us! Life on this side of heaven is painful all by itself. This is a broken world, and we are touched by its brokenness.
What we need to understand is that God gives us direction to keep us from adding more pain to the brokenness! There’s a reason that “do not commit adultery” is one of the 10 Commandments. It’s very painful for all who are touched by it. If you’re reading this, you likely see the reality of that. You didn’t trust God’s direction before, but can you see now that He was right?
God’s ways often feel upside down to us. They go against what we FEEL like doing. Here are two examples:
- When our spouse expresses their hurt, we will FEEL like defending ourselves or even blaming our spouse. Instead, God gives us this direction and we need to follow it: A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)
- When our spouse wants the whole truth, we will FEEL like keeping some things back. We’ll even rationalize that we don’t want to hurt them anymore. Instead, God gives us this direction and we need to follow it: Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices. (Colossians 3:9)
These will be moments of surrender. You see it isn’t once and done. We have to lay down our old ways and actively choose God’s ways day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. When we understand that God’s ways are the best because they protect us and our loved ones in the long run, we can better surrender to His leadership.
Surrender is Trusting That God Is at Work
When we’re in a healing and restoring season of life, there are times where it feels like nothing is happening. Because we can’t always see progress, we can jump to the assumption that progress isn’t being made. However, the truth is that God is always working.
We can’t follow our feelings; this is where God’s truth needs to inform us. John 5:17 tells us, “My Father is always working, and so am I.” We can trust that God is working even if we can’t see how He’s working.
Some of that work is inside of us. Some of that is inside of our spouse and others affected by the choices we made. We all have free will so when God is at work, He is inviting us to do things His way. He’s inviting us to surrender. He’s inviting us to healing and restoration. He’s doing the same for our spouse.
We each get to choose, however, if we’ll respond to the invitation. You can only control you. You can only decide for you. Trust that God is at work and make sure you respond to His invitation to do things His way each and every day.
Surrender is Giving Up the Right to Know and Understand
At the height of “doing things my way” I wanted to understand God’s ways. I wanted to know what He was doing. I wanted to understand why things happened the way they happened. I wanted, I wanted, I wanted…there are those words again.
In order to move to a different heart position, I had to pay attention to Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.” There are just some things we will never know and never understand on this side of heaven. We have to let God be God and recognize that we are not.
Back to the Ten Commandments. The first commandment is, “You shall have no other gods before me.” Do you know that sometimes we try to become like God? This is when we can begin to worship the idol of “self.” When we surrender, we settle it in our hearts that “God is God and I am not.”
Surrender is Giving Up the Demand That Things Turn Out the Way You Want
When we pray and ask God for something, we must be careful about assuming what the answer to that prayer needs to be. When I was praying for God to change my marriage (and if I’m honest—most often I was praying that He would change my wife), I kept looking for that prayer to be answered in specific ways and those things weren’t happening. Therefore, I determined God wasn’t listening and He didn’t care. That’s when I took things into my own hands.
The truth is He was at work in my wife, and He was inviting me to respond to the work He wanted to do inside of me but neither of those looked like what I was expecting. If I had to give you a picture of what that might have looked like, it would be me asking God to work and then keeping my eyes peeled to the right (imagine my head turned to the right). In reality, God was working over to my left in a way completely different than I assumed or demanded that He would work but I missed it completely because I wanted it to turn out the way I wanted it to, and I was only looking for that result.
There’s a story in the Bible about what surrender looked like in Jesus’s life. Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane knowing that he was facing a horrible death on the cross. Knowing this he prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
Do you see the request and then the surrender?
“Take this cup from me” is the request. He’s saying, “I don’t want to experience this pain. I don’t want to die a horrible death on the cross.”
“Not my will, but yours be done” is the surrender. He’s saying, “I made my request, but I trust you. I’m laying down my right to demand that things turn out like I want them to.”
God wants to hear our requests. He tells us to ask. However, He wants us to ask with a surrendered, Trusting heart. That’s exactly what Jesus modeled for us in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Go ahead and give it a try right now, “Lord this is what I long for _________________. I ask that with a surrendered heart. Not my will, but yours be done.”
Make that your daily prayer.
Surrender is Giving Up the Right to Do Things Your Way
There’s a truth in the Bible that Jill and I often explore with the couples we coach. It’s in the book of Romans, chapter 8, verses 5 and 6:
“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
When we do things our way, we are walking in the flesh. When we do things God’s way, we are walking in the Spirit. These verses tell us that when we walk in the flesh, we will experience death. Not a physical death but a spiritual or a relational death. Maybe it’s death of connection. Death of intimacy. Death of hope. However, when we walk in the Spirit, we will experience life and peace. That’s what we want!
Before my crisis, I would have said that I was clinging to God. I was a Pastor after all. The truth is I was battling between being in control myself and letting God be in control. I finally came to the position of surrender, where I yielded myself and acknowledged my foolishness. I admitted that I made a mess, and that I needed help from someone who was bigger than me. Surrender is totally a heart and soul decision. It is not behavior management.
The couples who make it, and experience what we call a 2.0 relationship, learn to walk in the Spirit. They surrender, die to their flesh, stay in a place of humility, and experience life and peace. This is what you want! It’s why you’re reading this book.
Therefore, surrender is what the posture of your heart needs to be in order to increase the possibility of the outcome you desire. It’s also the mindset you need for the actions that will clean up the mess and rebuild your marriage.
Lord Jesus, I surrender fully to you all that I’ve done and all that I am. I will no longer keep trying to do things my way and will start doing things Your way. Heal my heart to be one that loves as you love me. Heal my mind so that I may trust you to lead me through this mess and to rebuild my marriage. In Jesus Name…Amen.
Surrender is a total heart and soul decision. It is not behavior management. It puts Jesus (not us) in the driver’s seat of our lives.
Transforming our relationships and ourselves starts here. We aren’t going to lie, it takes a lot of work and personal reflection, but a life of surrender is worth it! This is where we find hope and purpose. A life of surrender is how we experience true freedom.
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If you found this excerpt helpful and you’re dealing with broken trust in a marriage, we encourage you to check out our full books: I Really Messed Up and My Heart is Broken. And if you are looking for even more resources to start your stronger, faith-filled marriage, be sure to check out our FREE Marriage Crash Course.
