Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Dear Friends:

A good friend of mine this week told me of an angry exchange that he had with colleagues. We were talking on our cell phones (hands-free of course) on the drive home from work.

“I try so hard,” he said. “I start the morning with a prayer, ‘Jesus, help me be more like you,’and that is what I really want.” Within the hour I am defensive and mean and having to apologize for falling short once again.

“It’s the wrong prayer,” I said.

“What?”

“You are praying the wrong prayer. Praying to be more like Jesus keeps you in the game and you aren’t up to it. No one is. I know because I’ve prayed that prayer and inevitably I’ve been defeated. As they say, ‘I have been there, done that, and own the souvenir T-shirt from the experience.'”

“What should I pray?”

“‘Lord, take me out of this. Get me completely out of the way so I do not obstruct your way or impede your will.’That’s what I’ve learned to pray out of necessity.”

I continued. “We grow up being told, ‘You do your part and God will do his part.’Well, the problem with that scenario is that I am incompetent to do my part. If I try to match my 1% of clay to the 99% of God’s steel, inevitably my clay will crumble and I will fall. My twenty years of formal education, a professional degree, reading the Bible every day, fervent prayer and determination simply push me to a place where the fall is farther and harder. This happened to me over and over until I wanted to give up more than I wanted to go on trying. That’s where I discovered grace which means that I have to approach each day and each issue with the conviction that whatever happens is entirely dependent upon God and in no way upon me.”

“Isn’t that irresponsible?” my friend asked.

“It is counter-intuitive to me. Like you, I am strong-willed, results-oriented, pride myself on sticking to principle, and I’m hot-tempered to boot. It is a trap to think that I’ve got the strength and smarts to make things happen because the boundary between working on the solution and becoming part of the problem is ephemeral. I get inflamed and swollen with pride and effort and push harder until something breaks. Usually what breaks is relationship. So, I often pray Psalm 61:1-2 when I feel the swelling of pride and anger coming on.

Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.
From the end of the earth
I call to you,
when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I. . . .

“What that prayer does for me is restore the connection to God that is weakening and failing because I have gotten way out there on my own. More importantly, I need my perspective restored to see that God, the rock, towers over me and overshadows me with a love that I’ve too easily forgotten and left behind. I really can’t trust myself in my natural bent to sin and the inconsistencies of my performance. The talents that I’ve been given for organization, strategy, intellectual focus and eloquence are no substitute for the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control that is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22).

“If my spirit is fired-up and enlarged and I am driving hard on the target regardless of the cost to anyone else, one thing is for sure, I have not yielded to the Holy Spirit. I need to come back to the Giver and stop working the gifts. That’s why my favorite Scripture verse has become Galatians 2:19-20: ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave his life for me.'”

“I get that,” my friend said, “but it is so hard.”

“It’s hard,” I said, “because we fight so fiercely to stay alive and in the game. But this is what it means to ‘come to the Cross. We have to die. All that talk about Jesus being our example and telling us to ask, ‘What would Jesus do?’ makes Jesus into a set of rules and makes us players in a game that we are never going to win. The way to victory is to say, ‘Lord, I can’t, but you can. Take away the things that I am holding tight, remove my temptation to think that I can do better at copying you and become my life instead. Let me die and get out of the way. That’s the ultimate surrender–to die to self. There is not a chance that I am going to come to that point on my own.

“What I’ve learned about surrender is that I don’t always have the will or even desire to lay down my weapons and stop the rebellion that has become my way of life. So I need what I call ‘the devastation of grace’  — Jesus Christ moving in and taking over in spite of my best intentions, not because of them. Surrender has come to mean to me that prayer, ‘Lord, I can’t but I have faith that you can.’Often the thing that I can’t do is quit. Like an overtired, overexcited child running in mindless circles far past his energy reserves and bedtime, I have to be picked up and held tight despite my stubborn insistence that I am really OK until I relax and rest in the arms of Jesus.”

“How can you call it “surrender” when you say you aren’t able to give up?” my friend asked.

“That’s a good question and I had no answer to it until I discovered that my strength is my weakness because it leads me away from Christ. A lot of religion is about sharpening and burnishing our strengths. You know the patter: ‘Your winning, success, skill, wealth, power, influence, etc. can make you such a witness for Christ.’Jesus just plain blew those notions away. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. . . None of you can be my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. . . You cannot serve God and wealth. . . You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God’ (Mt 5:3; Lk 14:33; 16:13,15).

“Jacob at the height of his wealth and power and with his best scheme yet ready to unfold got into a wrestling match with Christ that lasted all night and left him a broken but blessed man (Gen 32:22-32). The breaking is part of the blessing, I’ve learned, for as Paul said, ‘My weakness reveals the power of God’ (2 Cor 12:9). I need a Savior, not a life coach or a performance manager. Recognizing Jesus Christ as my Savior keeps me grounded in the reality that I need saving. Thinking of Jesus as my example, teacher, friend, leader, CEO etc. does not get me to the place that accepting him as my Savior and Lord does. I owe my life to him. When this fact stands above all other considerations for me, I have come to faith.

“Like the doomed swimmer who is so afraid of drowning that he fights the life-guard that comes to carry him in, I have to go limp before I can be saved. So my prayer is ‘Lord, do what you must to get me out of the way, but take over my life and this situation.’ It is the choice of faith to ask him to do this even when I do not feel like it. As his power grows in my life, it becomes easier to yield and go limp because his tenderness melts the hardness of my heart and his loveliness changes my unworthiness. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” is the way that Paul described this (Col 1:27).

“Isn’t that scary?” my friend asked. “What if he isn’t there to carry you?”

“It is scary, but I am convinced that God loves me and when that conviction reached my heart from my head, it made all the difference. The power of a great and overwhelming love is the only power that really matters.  If I know that I am loved no matter what and I can always come home, I can give up on those things that we do to ourselves and each other in the attempt to survive which is really what sin amounts to. I no longer have to fight and compete, because I have a God and he loves me. It is true for you also. I find that we learn this over time by living and hoping for it, not all at once. There is a reason that patience is a fruit of the Spirit. We are in this for the long haul.”

We both had long since reached our respective drive-ways by this point so we called it a night and hung-up. I have thought a lot about the conversation since then. It brought out thoughts that I didn’t know I had in me, at least to be articulated in this fashion, but in conscious examination, I believe them. I am grateful for the Holy Spirit that gives me the lived-out reality of those thoughts and calls me back when I try to go it on my own. I am also praying that my friend is now praying the “right” prayer: “Lord, do what you must to get me out of the way, but take over my life and this situation.”

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books,Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals.Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.

Kent and his beloved Patricia are enjoying their 31st year of marriage. They are the proud parents of Andrew, a college student.