Beyond Resistance: Discovering Peace Through Dependence and Surrender

Blog by Alan Fadling

Two weeks ago, I wrote about humility and gentleness, two little virtues that can guide us into Jesus’s way of peace. Today, I’ll share three more little virtues that can help us.

The third little virtue that guides us to places of peace is…

Patience

One of the older English words for patience is “longsuffering.” Patience is being willing to endure certain forms of suffering or discomfort, especially in the service of others. At first glance, does that sound peaceful to you? Me either.

Impatience is being utterly unwilling to wait. Waiting feels like an inevitable place of anxiety. But what or who we are waiting for makes a great deal of difference. At times, my anxiety is an impatient companion demanding that an unpleasant situation change more quickly to something pleasant. This desire is understandable and natural. But the way of peace moves along the path of patient goodness.

A practice I’ve sometimes recommended to assess the level of hurry in your soul is to purposely drive in the right lane of the freeway. It probably sounds like unnecessary torture. When I’ve tried this practice on, my first interior reaction is usually frustration and irritation. I’m losing something. I’m wasting time. Maybe.

Or maybe the five or ten minutes I’ll gain weaving through traffic to win my own version of the Freeway Grand Prix is costing more than it’s saving me. The anger that lies just below the surface when I consider every person on the highway as an opponent to be beaten has a way of being corrosive.

When I’ve settled into the right lane (or stayed in any one lane regardless of how often I am passed by other drivers), I’ve eventually found that not being in a race is a more peaceful way to drive. If someone else wins that race, it costs me nothing. And what do they win anyway? The more peaceful me that arrives at my destination slightly later is a much better win.

Impatience is forgetting that peace is more gift than paycheck. It is more grace than works. It is more about being received than achieved. This is, at least in part, why little virtues like humility, gentleness, and patience pave the way of peace far more than pride, harshness, and impatience.

So in our journey toward a more non-anxious life, patience replaces the anger I feel when I assume the way to peace lies in demanding it now from the people and circumstances around me.

A fourth little virtue that helps us find peace is…

Dependence

 When I say that dependence is a pathway to peace, I’m not talking about any old variety of dependence. Being dependent on someone who is unreliable or unkind does not lead to peace. Who we are dependent on makes all the difference.

There is, after all, a sort of holy independence in which we resist the temptation to be defined by others. But there is also an unholy independence in which we resist God’s way for us. We have a Maker, and that Maker has a good design and beautiful purpose for our lives. The proper and, in fact, peaceful response to that design is something called obedience. Obedience? Something inside us likely cringes at that word.

We may think, “Obedience is for pets. Obedience is for children. Obedience isn’t for an adult like me.” But we all have someone or something we obey, whether that’s our own cravings or the advice of a person we admire. Holy obedience is agreeing—in mind, heart, and way—with the good wisdom of our Maker. Peace comes in alignment with God’s purposes in and for our lives.

So we find our way into peace as holy dependence replaces any self-reliance that assumes I must acquire peace by my own self-directed efforts.

And, finally, a fifth little virtue that helps us experience deeper peace is…

Surrender

If humility, gentleness, patience, and dependence are unpopular virtues in our culture, surrender is anathema.

Ours is a culture that treasures independence and never surrendering. I’m not recommending that we surrender our lives to every impulse, priority, or idea to cross our paths. That sort of surrender never helps anyone. Like with dependence, the one to whom we surrender makes all the difference.

As in these other little virtues, Jesus is our supreme example. I think of him in Gethsemane’s olive grove as he wrestles in prayer over what lies before him. His friends join him in this familiar time and place of prayer on this evening when he will be arrested and begin making his way to the cross.

Being fully God and fully human, Jesus wrestles with the horrible suffering he will endure at the hands of the Romans. He pleads, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). What he prays for is not wrong, yet out of love he is willing to surrender his own desires for that which is best.

We are living in a time very much like that of the Old Testament judges. The last line of the book of Judges says, “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25 ESV).

There was no sense of common good, only of personal good defined as each one saw fit. We’re living in such a time now. If this sort of self-reliance and willfulness leads to reliable peace for us, then why is anxiety at an all-time high?

Just the other day as I scrolled on one of my social media feeds, I saw a meme that said, “Feeling overwhelmed? Life out of control? Try giving up!” That’s the spirit of the connection I’m making here between surrender and peace.

When it comes to walking the way of peace, surrender replaces the willfulness that assumes peace is something I achieve rather than receive.

Conclusion

Even as I wrote this post, I felt resistance in myself. I heard my own skeptical mind saying, “That’s a load of greeting card fluff.” But my own experience has taught me that more peace is found in humility than in pride. More peace comes from being gentle than from taking a harsh posture toward others. More peace comes in practicing patience than in maintaining an edge of anger. More peace comes in receptive dependence than self-reliant independence.

Learning to align ourselves with God’s very good way for us tends to increase peace in our lives and our work. This is what I think the psalmist means when he writes, “Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psalm 85:10).

The close relationship between righteousness and peace is fostered through the little virtues.

In reflecting on the transformative power of humility, gentleness, patience, dependence, and surrender, we confront our own resistance and skepticism. Yet, in our honest exploration, we discover that these virtues hold the key to genuine peace in our lives. As we grapple with our inner doubts and hesitations, we can also welcome the invitation to conversation with God, allowing these postures of peace to guide us on our continuing journey into non-anxious living.

For Reflection:

• What have you been feeling as you read about humility, gentleness, patience, dependence, and surrender being pathways to peace? What resistance arises in you? Is there anything that feels inviting?
• Consider the idea of holy dependence versus unholy independence. In what areas of your life are you relying more on your own efforts rather than aligning with God's wisdom and purpose?