Excerpt: 'Dangerous Surrender'

Dec. 10, 2007 — -- Kay Warren gained international attention as the wife of megachurch pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren. In her new book, "Dangerous Surrender: What Happens When You Say Yes to God," Warren traces her transformation from a housewife to an international HIV/AIDS advocate.

A life-changing 2003 visit to Africa helped spur her humanitarian efforts. The book encourages readers to surrender themselves to loving others in the name of Christ.

Read an excerpt of Warren's book below.

SOMEONE ONCE ASKED ME TO DEFINE CHRIS-TIAN-ITY IN ONE word, and after some reflection, I responded, "It all boils down to surrender." Everything I know about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ begins and ends with sur-render -- with saying yes to God. That tiny, simple word initiates an exhilarating, life-altering adventure that will take you places you never thought you'd go-- both literally and figuratively.

On my own journey of surrender to God, I've witnessed the best and the worst this world offers. I've traveled to brothels and resorts, palaces and mud huts. Along the way I've met with presidents and prostitutes, billionaires and paupers. I've held newborn babies crying robustly and dying women whispering their last words.The journey has been about new internal realities as well as external realities. God has also taken me places within myself I've never anticipated. I've experienced the best and the worst about me. In that process, God has become more real and more personal.

As you read, I believe you will encounter these same unexpected highs and lows. That's why I recommend you find a reading partner right from the start. Most of us learn best when we have the opportunity to process and dialogue with someone else about what we're reading.

The reading won't be easy or always pleasant -- this is not a book to read when you're seeking a lighthearted romp through a make-believe world. But if you're yearning for something you can't quite define, then you're ready for Dangerous Surrender.

The end of each chapter contains simple steps to get you started on applying the principles of surrender. At first glance, they may seem so basic you'll be tempted to ignore them, but they are intended to put surrender within your grasp. They are attain-able by everyone!

Reading Dangerous Surrender may raise questions in your mind. In fact, I expect you'll come to the end of each chapter and discover you have more questions than answers about how to apply the principles to your own spiritual journey.

Don't be discouraged! I intentionally left the how-to's a bit vague. Sure, it would have been easier if I had given you a step one, two, and three to becoming a dangerously surrendered man or woman of faith. But that isn't real life. No one arrives at spiritual maturity by following a formula -- at least I haven't experienced that. Instead, I've in-cluded a section at the end of the book with five or six questions per chapter to allow you to wrestle with the new thoughts and ideas stirred up by your reading. These ques-tions probe beneath the surface to help you as you process your reactions and come up with responses that will eventually lead to a shift in your thinking and behavior.Now -- let's talk.

Peeking through the Cracks

"Much is required from those to whom much is given."

Luke 12:48 NLT
If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world,then thank Him for breaking your heart.
Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 1

I DIDN'T SEE IT COMING.
I woke up on a normal day, looked ahead to a typical schedule. Nothing out of the ordinary was planned —routine stuff filled the calendar slot. I didn't have the faintest clue that God was about to rock my world and change the trajectory of my life forever. Unaware of the radical change in store for me on that spring day in 2002, I sat down on the couch in my living room with a cup of tea and picked up one of the weekly newsmagazines we subscribe to. I noticed that there was a story about AIDS in Africa, and I casually flipped over to that section, not because I cared about AIDS in Africa (I didn't care about AIDS anywhere, let alone in Africa), but because I wanted to stay up on current events. As I began to read, I quickly realized that the graphic pictures that accompanied the article were horrific —skeletal men and women, children so weak they couldn't brush the flies away from their faces. I couldn't look at them. But for some strange reason, I was compelled to continue reading. I partially covered my eyes with my hands and tried to peek through the cracks in my fingers at the words without looking at the faces of dying men, women, and children. God is really wise and knew exactly how to bypass my feeble attempts to block out the upsetting photographs. If he couldn't get my attention with the pictures, he would use the words. The phrase "twelve million children orphaned due to AIDS in Africa" jumped off the magazine pages and imprinted itself in my mind. I was shocked and stunned and, frankly, disbelieving. "No," I said out loud, "there's no way there could be twelve million children orphaned in one place due to one illness at one time. I don't even know one orphan— how could there be twelve million?" I threw the magazine on the floor in horror.

But I couldn't get rid of this new reality so easily. That night I was haunted by the thought of twelve million boys and girls left alone, their parents the victims of AIDS. As I drifted into sleep, my last thought was about the orphans; I woke up in the morning with their little faces swirling through my mind. Suddenly AIDS, Africa, and orphans were everywhere! Every newspaper I picked up had an article about AIDS in Africa; it seemed as though every newscast echoed the story. Over the next few weeks I tried to escape the stories and the pictures, but I couldn't. God and I began an intense internal conversation. My first argument with him was over the numbers of people infected by HIV —the virus that causes AIDS — and the number of orphans left in the wake. I reasoned to myself that the media must be exaggerating the numbers. Since I considered myself pretty savvy about global situations, surely I would know if a problem of this magnitude existed.

As the days went by, the internal dialogue with God continued unabated, but it also began to shift focus. I gradually began to accept that while I had been raising my family and serving in my church, a humanitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions had been escalating on our planet. There was no media exaggeration, no propaganda to garner sympathy for a minor cause. Something tragic and terrible was happening right under my nose.

I felt powerless to do anything about the new reality thrust in front of me. I cried out to God, "Why are you bothering me with this? There's nothing I can do about it. I'm just an ordinary person. What could one person do about such a gigantic problem? And by the way, in case you haven't noticed, I'm a white, suburban mom with a minivan. What do I know about a disease in Africa?" After a month of anguished wrestling with God, I reached a point at which I had to make a conscious decision. Would I retreat to my comfortable life and to my settled plans, pretending I didn't know about the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the millions of orphans? Or 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? I didn't know what would happen if I said yes to this increasingly strong urge to engage —what did "engaging" even mean? I felt like I was standing on the edge of a giant precipice; I couldn't go back, and yet the way forward looked like stepping into a void.

The moment of decision came. With eyes closed and teeth clenched tightly, I finally said yes. The second I did, my heart broke, and I was shattered. It was as though God took my heart and put it through a wood chipper — what went in was a "branch," but what came out on the other side was a heart shredded into a million pieces. With lightning speed, God yanked the blindfold of apathy, ignorance, and complacency from my eyes, and I was overcome by the realities of the suffering he revealed. I ached with a new kind of pain —a pain that felt as though it had come from the most visceral part of me. I was filled with sorrow and grief. I wept as though I was the one who was sick, or it was my child who was dying, or I was the orphan left alone. I knew next to nothing about HIV/AIDS, but my heart was instantly linked with those who know it intimately. Like the apostle Paul knocked off his donkey on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9), I was changed by my encounter with truth.

I became a seriously disturbed woman. Suddenly I was consumed with a desire to learn about HIV/AIDS. I devoured every book, article, and video I could get my hands on. I searched the Internet for websites that would teach me about this global crisis. I consulted health care professionals. I put out feelers through all of my contacts, in search of anyone who could help me understand how HIV/AIDS began, what was known about it, and what could be done. I was disturbed — almost frantic — in my hurry to make up for lost time.

The word disturbed is often associated with mental illness and instability. We say, "He's disturbed," when we describe someone who reacts in an overly emotional way or appears troubled emotionally. I want to redefine this word, because I believe that God is looking for some disturbed people. He is searching for men and women, students, and young adults who will allow him to disturb them by making them truly see the world in which we live— so disturbed that they will be compelled to do something about what they see. Most of us have grown up in a culture that promotes precisely the opposite approach. Parents tell their children, "Never talk about politics or religion; it makes people uncomfortable." And for the most part, we've obeyed this cultural edict. Instead of tackling uncomfortable topics, we talk about the latest TV reality show or the hot sports figure or the price of gasoline. Believers are just as guilty as nonbelievers! Even worse, we refuse to talk about the painful, disturbing subjects — child prostitution, child labor, rape, poverty, injustice, ethnic hatred, greed, materialism, environmental destruction, HIV/AIDS. These are disturbing topics. But 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.

Jesus' words "Much is required from those to whom much is given" (Luke 12:48 NLT) began to reverberate inside my mind, taking their place alongside the disturbing images I had seen. I had been given so much—what was my responsibility in return? God clearly tells us that we are "to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with [our] God" (Micah 6:8). I began to wonder how to apply this truth to my life. How does becoming a seriously disturbed person affect the way I live?

* Lyrics by Danniebell Hall, Forever Daniebelle Ministries. Used by permission of EMI Chris tian Music Group. All rights reserved. Now the 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 could have made me smarter, more talented, and more beautiful if he had chosen to — but his hands lovingly shaped me just the way he wanted me to be. Why? Because my ordinariness, when surrendered to God, allows him to make a miracle out of my life in much the same way as when he fed thousands of hungry people with two tiny fish and five loaves of bread nearly two thousand years ago. Truly, little becomes much when we place it in his hands.

That day, I offered all that I am and all that I am not to him. I said, "God, I'm so sick of whining and complaining that I'm just average. Forgive me for accusing you of making a mistake when you made me. From now on, I accept with joy your decision to make me average. I surrender myself to you. Use me whenever, wherever, and in whatever way you choose. Here's my lunch —will you miraculously multiply it?" That simple but honest prayer of surrender was the most dangerous decision I had ever made. The past twenty years have provided countless opportunities for me to live up to my promise to be happy with who I am and who God has made me to be. He received my surrender of my ordinariness and has multiplied my meager offerings again and again. I have spent many years developing the gift of teaching I discovered when I stopped being afraid of all of the comparisons to Rick. I was totally satisfied with my plans for future speaking and teaching around the world. But God interrupted my plans and seriously disturbed me on that fateful day when I read a magazine article about HIV/AIDS in Africa.

In this journey of becoming more fully surrendered to God, I've benefited greatly from role models — other people who show me the way to becoming yielded to God. Jesus' mother, Mary, has been a model of surrender for me. In fact, more than any other character in Scripture, Mary embodies the full extent of what it means to surrender oneself to God. She was a flesh-and-blood woman who made an astonishing commitment to put herself at God's disposal when the angel announced to her that she would carry the Savior in her womb. The rest of her life offered her the opportunity to make good on that promise. Would she really trust God? Would she trust him enough to say yes without knowing where her surrender would take her? There was nothing about Mary from an outward perspective that would make her worthy of "Who's Who in America" or any list of "Most Widely Admired Women," let alone qualify her to carry the Son of God in her body. She was young, poor, and probably uneducated —yet God honored her with a responsibility that most of us would run from. She could have argued long and hard with the angel who announced God's selection of her to give birth to God's Son, pointing out the obvious reasons he was making a big mistake. She could have made reasonable excuses for declining this "generous offer," perhaps even suggesting a few of her girlfriends whom God might consider instead. As unthinkable as it is from our vantage point in history, she could have flat-out refused. But her feeble protests quickly died. Having no idea what her yes would mean for her, she surrendered: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38 KJV). That is dangerous surrender! Mary yielded her body to become the place where the Savior developed and grew. She abandoned her previously stellar reputation to the village gossips, who gleefully speculated about her private life. She opened her heart wide to love a child as only a mother can. She watched him become a man who baffled her, confused her, and most likely even wounded her by his refusal to take Joseph's place in the carpenter shop. She followed him around during the three years of his public ministry, probably hoping just to be near him. With growing dread, she watched his popularity wane as he failed to live up to her people's erroneous idea of what the Messiah would look like. Finally, she learned the news that he had been arrested, beaten beyond recognition, and offered as a substitute for a convicted criminal named Barabbas.

A lifetime of saying yes culminated in that awful day when she stood near his cross, shattered by the sight of this precious child of hers hated, bleeding, broken, hanging from a tree — and still she said yes. There is no record of her lashing out at God in her grief, accusing him of giving her a raw deal, of misleading her into this place of extreme agony; there is no rescinding of her yes. Even her broken heart was given back to the one who had chosen her to be used for his purposes. She saw her son viciously slaughtered, placed in a tomb, resurrected, and then gone forever — this time back to heaven. Would saying yes ever bring joy to Mary's soul —

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

Father, you are disturbed by the misery you witness every day. None of it escapes your notice, but, honestly, a lot of it escapes mine. Forgive me for my complacency, my apathy, my ignorance. Help me to see the world through your eyes. I'm scared to surrender all to you; I'm not entirely sure I can trust you with what matters most to me. But I want to know you; I want to love like you love, and hurt the way you hurt. I want to live the adventure of risking it all for you. I am saying yes to you right now, no matter what that yes entails. Prayer