Dangerous Surrender, Kay Warren (what spoke to me)

I don't even know where to begin. This book is changing my life as we speak.  I just finished this book after a week of intense reading, sharing and relating to what Kay speaks of in the book (though through a completely different set of circumstances).  I have NO idea why I picked up this book next, considering it's been on my 'to read' shelf (along with another 6-8 books) since August of 2008 - so why NOW???  I have no idea, but I feel God working in my life now, more than ever and I can't even begin to describe how amazing it feels.  My heart is on fire for a passion I've had for so long, so I'm saying "YES, YES, YES" and the 'picture will slowly develop itself for me'.

To be honest....I am scared, excited, thrilled, anxious, confident, encouraged, confident and feel more alive, happy, fulfilled, whole, grateful and soulfuly satisfied about SO many aspects of this change in me but I really think this is what Kay Warren is getting at in Dangerous Surrender and essentially what is all about, saying 'YES' to God before you know what the question is.  If I could, I would buy a copy for each of my Christian friends and pass them out.  Considering I can't do that, because I am on a 'mission' for my trip in December - I highly encourage you to get a copy of this book and read it!  If it does, just for ONE person what it has done for me - YIPPY!  Hooray!

I did not do an 'in depth' book report/review for you, all I did was highlight the quotes from the book that touched me (and there were a TONNE of them)!    My next post, will be 8 videos of Kay Warren speaking about this book....again, I highly encourage you to take the time to watch.  It could transform your life!

Here's the links to purchase:

• For my Canadian friends:  Buy it at Chapters/Indigo Online by clicking.
• For my American friends:  Buy it at Amazon.com by clicking.

DANGEROUS SURRENDER, KAY WARREN

Chapter 1 Peaking through the Cracks

"Would I surrender to God's call and let my heart engage with a cause I was pretty sure would include buckets of pain and sorrow?

Disturbed:

“If we're not disturbed by the world in which we live, we will be consumed with the trivial, the insignificant and the temporary. We will spend our days pursuing all the wrong goals, living by the wrong measurement of success, evaluating our legacy by the wrong standard."

Luke 12:48 NLT "Much is required from those to whom much is given."

Micah 6:8 God clearly tells us "to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with (our) God."

The Developing Photograph:

"I had ignored the suffering of millions of people just because it made me uncomfortable or because I didn't know what to do about it."

"For you to become a seriously disturbed, surrendered person of faith, you will have to be willing to say yes in advance - to give God your answer before you've heard the question."

Ordinary People:

Paraphrased from page 27-28: "Great student - average grades, Grand tour pianist - average piano player, Miss America - no budding beauty, average in the looks department. Then she married a superstar who was always on top of everything. On the way to an event where she was speaking at, she began to cry and have a pity party asking God why he had 'made such a dreadful mistake'. Asking '"why didn't you make me better?" Then a song came on the radio called 'Ordinary People' and tears really flowed, but instead of self-pitying tears, they were tears of joy and peace. God chose ME to be an ordinary person! He cold have made me smarter, more talented, more beautiful if he had chosen to - but his hands lovingly shaped me just the way he wanted me to be.

Models of Surrender:

"I am the Lord's servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants" Luke 1:38 NLT

Surrender: Will you decide to say yes to God, even before knowing the full implications of what that yes may mean for you?

Chapter 2 The Kingdom of Me

"I had to trust that while I couldn't see where the steps of faith were leading me, I was walking on a firm structure that wouldn't let me fall. That's what it means to follow Jesus - saying yes and trusting that he won't let us fall, even when we can't see exactly where he's leading."

"It really isn't any of my business - or your business - what God does in someone else's life. My only business is to follow him"

"Here's the bottom line: Figuring out God's ways isn't any of my business. Following him is. Following Jesus is to offer to him all that you think you are, all that you really are, all that you think you are not, and all that you really are not - to be used in the way he chooses. It is stepping down from the throne of the Kingdom of Me and joining a new kingdom - the Kingdom of God. It's following him, even when following him makes no sense. I'm not there yet, but I'm on my way."

Surrender: Will you voluntarily surrender the keys to the Kingdom of Me and accept Jesus' dangerous invitation to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him?

Chapter 3 Gloriously Ruined

"She showed me how to greet Joanna with warmth and kindness, how to kneel down next to her and look in the eye, how to place my arms around her and hug her, how to pray an ask for God's comfort, strength, and help to be given in this terrible situation. She spoke of the hope of heaven - that while this world held pain and sorrow and sickness for Joanna, there is a better world she could be a part of through faith in Jesus, who loves her"

"I wanted nothing more than to fall on the ground and scream and sob - wailing to God on this little girl's behalf. All I could see was a future without the guiding love and support of the parents who had brought her into this world. Where was the daddy who would be her protector? Where was the father who would swing her into the air and listen for her squeals of delight? Where was the father who would stand proudly at her wedding, giving her in marriage? Where was the mommy who would cuddle her in the night and sing her back to sleep when she had a bad dream? Where was the mommy who would teach her how to be a woman? I barely contained my sobs until I got back to our van, where I cried and cried. My friend and colleague Elizabeth and I clung to each other in terrible grief. Being seriously disturbed was becoming a way of life."

"You and I have the opportunity to be Jesus' hands and feet to these brothers and sisters, making them known by our love."

"Seriously Disturbed, Gloriously Ruined Club"

"What is a litmus test of your surrender and obedience to God is how you treat the least among us (see Matthew 25:40)"

"In what ways are you allowing God to rearrange your schedule, your finances, your affections, so that you can regularly interact with those he loves?

Surrender: "Will you let God "ruin" you, forever altering how you relate to others in your life and world?"

Chapter 4 Ready, Set, Stop

"He allowed me to feel the sting of being ignored by some people whom I had assumed would be there for me. My faith was being tested in the crucible of cancer."

"Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colours. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way." James 1:2-4 MSG

"So be truly glad! There is a wonderful joy ahead, even though it is necessary for you to endure many trials for a while. These trials are only to test your faith, to show that it is strong and pure. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold - and your faith is far more precious to God than mere gold. So if your faith remains strong after being tried by fiery trials, it will bring you much praise and glory and honour on the day when Jesus Christ is revealed to the whole world." 1 Peter 1:6-7 NLT

"I found peace in knowing that while I cannot control 'how long' I live, I can control 'how' I live. One of my mottoes is "Control the controllables and leave the uncontrollables to God."

"Knowing life's fragility causes me to be more intentional, more passionate, more convinced of the sweetness of this moment, and more convicted than before that I am here for a reason. I don't want to waste a second of the time I have been given."

"He comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others. When other are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us." 2 Corinthians 1:4

"Remember: our faith-life shows its true colours when put to the test. Learning through your own suffering that God is good and that he can be trusted will prepare you to face the suffering and evil you encounter in the lives of others."

Surrender: "Will you surrender your demand for God to order your life the way you want it to be ordered?"

Chapter 5 Exposing Evil

"But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are a kingdom of priests, God's holy nation, his very own possession. This is so you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light" 1 Peter 2:9 NKJV

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." Galatians 5:22-23

"Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend them without expecting anything back" Luke 6:35 TNIV

"The greatest weapon we have against evil is doing good in Jesus' name."

Surrender: Will you stop "changing the channel" and living in denial of the evil in our world?

Chapter 6 Mirrors Don't Lie

"Before we initiate God's love to hurting, suffering people, we must surrender our carefully cultivated illusions about the depth of our brokenness."

“Why does it matter if I've faced the evil inside of me? Why can't just start caring and serving others, regardless of what's wrong on the side of mine?"

"We must see ourselves, not as separate from others - better, more educated, more cultured, more sophisticate, more civilized, less sinful, less evil, less prone to violence, less likely to cause harm - but as identical to them in our capacity to do evil. Otherwise we end up serving others from a position of pride, congratulating ourselves for our noble sacrifices rather than coming alongside a fellow stumbler and offering not our wholeness but our brokenness."

"God in his amazing love and mercy enters into those caves of my inmost being, down to the deepest part of me where no other human being can enter, where no one else will ever know me. God enters into that place where there are no excuses, no pretensions, no false fronts, no hiding. There I cannot pretend to be anything other than what I really am and what I am not. There he sees completely the depravity of my heart in a way you will never see."

"God is the only one who can enter deep into the caves of your inmost being and not be terrified or repulsed by what he sees."

"He says to you, "I know it all and I still love you". Because you are known at the deepest level by God - where you filthiest thoughts and most reprehensible deeds are revealed - and because you have been offered forgiveness and liberation through our Saviour, Jesus Christ, you can authentically move toward the maturing knowledge that you're no different from the person living next to you. You need Jesus. I do too. Everyone does. This truth changes everything."

"The new, higher standard he institutes is this: the same yardstick you use to evaluate someone else will be used to evaluate you; therefore, be careful how harshly you point your finger at another struggling human being unless you want that same finger to point back at you."

"You don't have to pretend that you're better than anyone else and would never do what they've done."

Surrender: Will you surrender your denial about the depravity of your soul and your ability to do unspeakable evil?

Chapter 7 The Gift of Presence

"While she was speaking in Bengali, I spoke in English, believing that the God who made her could help her understand, if not my words, but the love with which I spoke them. "I am sorry you hurt! I'm so sorry that you are here, alone and dying in this place. I'm so sorry that your family is not here with you - that they abandoned you to face your last days by yourself. But you are not alone! God is with you! You matter to him, and you matter to me. My arms around you are his arms; as I am wiping your tears away with my fingers, these are his fingers; as I touch your face, know that it is his hands lovingly reminding you of how dear you are to him. He loves you so much he sent his Son, Jesus, so that you could spend eternity with him! And he has sent me to you today to hold you and tell you one more time how special you are to him."

"Of all the gifts that God could give us, he gave the greatest one - he gave himself. Now he expects us to do the same for others."

"When I enter a room or any situation, I bring him with me because he lives inside of me."

“For us as Christ-followers, this is our prime task as well - to make the invisible God visible in a world that doesn't yet recognize him. We are to live incarnationally - God with us, God in us. To do so is at the heart of living our faith."

"When you extend hospitality to Christian brothers and sisters, even when they're strangers, you make faith visible" 3 John 5 MSG

"What comforted me was the presence of family members and friends who were willing to sit with me, sometimes without saying a single word."

"If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you already have within you what it takes to bring relief, hope and comfort to everyone you meet. You have Jesus inside you, and when you offer yourself, you're offering him."

"All of us have the same capacity for evil and the same capacity for goodness as the next person. When we allow evil to control us, we do monstrous, shameful things. When we allow the Spirit of God to control us, we can love sacrificially in ways that seem beyond our ability to do so."

"When members from my church are preparing to go on a short-term international mission trip, they frequently ask, 'What well we do while we're there?' I tell them, 'Perhaps the most important thing you do while there is just show up."

"What I'm suggesting is that in our hurry to do something, it's easy to rush past the people we're visiting. There will always be a need for action, for tangible solutions to complex problems. but as Christ-followers, let's be sure to be with people - to look them in the eye and listen to their story, to spend a few moments entering into their experiences, whether joyful or painful. This is how the invisible God becomes visible."

Surrender: Will you offer to others the greatest gift you possess - God living in you?

Chapter 8 A Deliberate Choice

"How can we pray for you today?"

"Compassion is choosing to share the pain of another. To do so runs counter to our natural inclination to protect ourselves from pain. It requires self-sacrifice and obedience to Jesus - as we do for others what he did for us."

"In suffer with somebody, we take into our own hands to suffer. We choose to do what we do not have to do, or even want to do; we walk, eyes wide open, into the pain of another human being and claim it as our own."

"For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. was in prison, and you visited me" Matthew 25:35-36 NLT

"Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" Matthew 25:40 TNIV

"Proof of our love for Jesus is found.....in loving and serving the sick, the poor, the weak, and the marginalized"

"I Thirst"

"Choosing to suffer with proves our love for our Savior and at the same time proves to the least, the last, and the lost that there is a Savior who loves them."

"Choosing to suffer with is a powerful witness to being a Christ-follower. He chooses to suffer with me; I can now choose to suffer with a fellow human being for Jesus' sake."

"Are you beginning to understand that compassion is about making a decision?"

"expressing compassion is a deliberate choice"

"We are most like Christ when we choose to offer the gift of our presence and choose to absorb within ourselves the suffering of the least, the last and the lost. Are you looking for Jesus? That's where you'll find him."

Surrender: Will you freely choose to bear pain that is not your own?

Chapter 9 - An Unexpected Bond

"He gets angry at the devastation that sin has caused on our planet"

"It should have come as no surprise, then, that if I was going to love God deeply and passionately, it would automatically lead to a broken heart for me. There's no way to grow in loving him and not grow in having his heart for his world, leading directly into his sufferings. Radical internal changes occur when we become Christ-followers, and the changes will eventually spill over externally into how we live our lives."

"I often felt as though it all depended on my efforts, my work, my compassion. True, I never said that, and I'm not sure I was even conscious of how thoroughly I had given in to a 'savior complex,' but the effects of it were obvious in my life."

"I had to surrender my desire to save the world."

"When we ask the lord's blessing upon our drinking from the cup of wine at the Lord's Table, this means, doesn't it, that all who drink it are sharing together the blessing of Christ's blood? And when we break off the pieces of the bread from the loaf to eat there together, this shows that we are sharing together in the benefits of his body. No matter how many of us there are, we all eat from the same loaf, showing that we are all parts of the one body of Christ." 1 Corinthians 10:16-17 LB

Surrender: Will you let your pain - and the suffering of others you have chosen to bear - draw you into intimate fellowship with Jesus?

Chapter 10 - Linking Arms

"God has commissioned those in his eternal family to be his hands and feet in the world, to be his voice of love, to speak truth, to act justly, to combat evil, and to do good."

"Our mission is to care for the sick, the widows, the orphans - and to heal in Jesus' name."

"With eyes wide open to the inconsistencies, mistakes, and even sins of all of us who are part of Christ's church, I still embrace hi church with my whole heart."

"We don't go it alone. God has given us each other in a forever family called his church so that we do not face life by ourselves."

Surrender: Will you commit to playing your part in the body of Christ, his church, as the hope of the world?

Chapter 11 - Some May Die Today

"Being willing to say, "Whatever it takes" - and mean it - is dangerous."

"For most of us, dying for Jesus' sake is not something we will be asked to do, but in the deepest places in our souls, we must come to the place where we are willing to die if it serves God's purposes."

"It is possible to live a 'safe' life as a Christian - never really developing a rugged faith that is willing to take risks for Jesus' sake - but living in a protective bubble won't change the world."

"Most of us are called to pay a much smaller price, although each point of surrender can at times turn into high drama as we play tug-of-war with God: 'No, God, don't ask me to surrender that. I can't. I don't want to. Please don't ask for that.' Often as we keep praying, as we keep seeking, we know for certain that in order to remain in an intimate conversation with hi, that very thing is what we need to yield. Sometimes we must yield something as ordinary or common as our personal relationships. I have to be honest - surrendering all that we are to God does not always lead to peaceful relationships."

"Rick had always told me that someday God would use me in ways I couldn't imagine, but when it started to happen, the changes created a lot of discomfort for all of us. I was no longer the same person. There were times when my children felt as though they didn't know me anymore."

"These are the people who have changed me forever. They are the ones who have propelled me into moving beyond my comfortable life to embrace a more dangerous one. It's a life not without joy and pleasure - but it's a life that can no longer hope that someone else will answer God's call to care. I'm not the same person I was five years ago; my life truly reads like a 'before' and 'after' story."

"In the process of letting go of the life I knew and was comfortable with, God has made my life a miracle. This young girl and woman who was terrified that she would only ever be ordinary and average has seen God multiply the small 'lunch' yielded to him with trembling hands into bread that feeds others."

"He has made my life a sacramental offering through the wounds I've received in my life"

"Are you willing to become disturbed? Are you willing to become ruined? Are you willing to make a dangerous surrender? Will you expose and oppose evil wherever you find it? Will you join the battle? Will you make the invisible God visible by being his hands and feet in this broken world - by doing good?....Are you willing to risk it all for his sake? Will you say yes to God?"

Surrender: Will you risk your life and all you hold dear fr the sake of God's kingdom?