Buddhists understand the importance of surrender,

loving what is, being comfortable with the unknown. What they don’t understand, is how much easier it is to live peacefully like a Buddhist, as a Jesus-dependent, rather than a self-dependent, where life is UP TO ME. Surrendering, loving what is, being comfortable with the unknown, in my own power, is so-much harder than simply confessing my INdependence/autonomy/willfulness/agenda/unbelief-in-Jesus’-sovereign-reign. Impossible to be Jesus-dependent — clueless-I-know-what’s-best, without believing He is totally sovereign over everything and everyone.

We humans try and control our circumstances because we’re confident-we-know-what’s-best. INdependence, not DEpendence. So while Buddhists have a great goal — an other-worldly peace, they have to rely on their own power to get there. Course, we Christians have the same problem — trying to follow Jesus in our own strength, leaning on our own understanding, wise in our own eyes. The more Jesus grows us Christians in self-awareness, the more we’ll see our failure at following Him — our failure at believing He knows best, so the more we’ll CONFESS, which gets us back to being clueless-we-know-what’s-best. Ahhh. Confession is the pathway to happiness. Blindness/denial is the pathway to stress, frustration, malcontentedness. Seed cast on thorny soil that does not reproduce.

— Dave McCarty, GospelFriendships, who is so pathetically weak and dysfunctional that the sovereignty of Jesus isn’t optional, but essential

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