Leading from Surrender

We often paint the hero as the one victoriously waving the sword on the mountaintop with their cape flowing in the wind. But Jesus portrayed a paradigm shifting posture for us to follow. He defied the Herculean perspective of leadership by choosing to come down the mountain instead of climbing up it. And it is from this posture of surrender that hope and freedom is ushered into the world. 

In this week’s Insider video, Danielle Strickland discusses how true changemakers are ordinary humans living in a posture of surrender. She goes on to explain how surrender calls for us to have “an inner resolve to resist. To say say no to Pharaoh and yes to God.” 

What do you need to start saying no to in order to lead from a posture of surrender? Watch the video below to take off the cape, lay down the sword, and lead like Jesus.

Prefer to read rather than watch? Here’s the transcript to Danielle’s talk:

Good courage actually takes place when God's people live surrendered lives. Good encourage, the courage that changes things, that shifts things, that does things on the Earth that loses God's kingdom to come. It happens when God's people choose surrender as a posture. This is how ... and I wish it was different. I wish it was just like Herculean acts and feats of incredible victory, but actually it's surrender. It's a laying down into letting go, it's the way of Jesus that brings courage into the world. That brings hope into the world, that brings freedom into the world. It's this decision that humans make, and if you haven't even just embraced your own humanity, you can't get there yet because you're still stuck in the present cycles of fear.

But when you get out of that cycle of fear one day, when you decide to take the cape off and lay the sword down and sit here and just go, "I'm just like Jesus the human one", then you can begin, then you can begin to live a life of good courage, and here's what courage looks like. It looks like no ... no, let me tell about this.

Exodus Chapter 1, one of the great things, I named my son Moses and I taught him from a very young age. I say, "Moses, when you get to Pharaoh what are you going to say?" Moses goes, "Let me people go." And I'm like, "That's right, that's right, that's right, that's Moses right there", the human one. We all think that Moses started the Exodus that's because men have been getting the credit for generations but read your Bible. Exodus Chapter 1, I'm not making this stuff up, Exodus Chapter 1, read your Bible. There's two people that started the Exodus. There's two people.

Pharaoh, by the way, is unnamed in Exodus 1 because there's nothing special about a tyrant who oppresses people, nothing special about that at all. That's just, that's how that goes. The Bible, the narrator of the Bible, of that story does not even name Pharaoh, just as, "there was a Pharaoh", it's classic but there are two people that he names in Exodus 1. The two people that he names are two midwives, pay attention two midwives. They are the lowest of the lowest of the lowest of society. If you can find someone human enough they're human. That's all they are. There is nothing Herculean about them. There's nothing grandiose, they have no positions of power, they aren't like in control, they can't change the nation, all they can do is say no, and that's what they do.

Pharaoh says, "What I want to do is I want you kill all the baby boys born", and the midwives say no. That's how courage begins, with an inner resolve to resist, to say no to oppression, to say no to the Pharaoh, to say no to power, to speak truth like that, to say no. The scripture is also clear it says this. "The reason they say no to Pharaoh is so they can say yes to God." The reason they say no to Pharaoh is so they can say yes to God. I'm telling you this right now, you cannot say yes to God until you say no to Pharaoh, that's why it takes so much courage to say yes to God.

It's not like God's lacking in strategy to change the world, he's just lacking in people. He's lacking in people who will surrender themselves to the strategy to change the world. The reason he is lacking in people to say yes to him is because he is lacking in people who will say no to Pharaoh. This is a key because there's always going to be this thing that you have to say no to.

When I was studying some of the civil rights movement, this is really fascinating, but Rosa Parks, she's interviewed years and years and years after the bus boycott that she had started in Montgomery, that day where she refused to get out of her seat. A reporter was saying her, "Why did you pick that day? Why did you pick that day out of all the days?" Rosa Parks said, "I was tired."

The reporters says, "You were tired like really? Like you're just tired? Like you're so tired you couldn't get out of your seat?" She said, "No, not that kind of tired. See, I was tired of giving in." She said, "What I thought", she said like, "I had this idea that every time I would give in to oppression, I thought that oppression would loosen." She said, "What I started to realize is every time I give in to oppression, every time I give in to fear, every time I give inn to Pharaoh, he tightens his grip", so she said on that day I was tired of giving in.

Is there anybody here who's tired of giving in? Is there anybody in here who's tired of giving in to retributive violence as a solution? Anybody tired? Is there anybody tired of our kids being trafficked and sold? Is there anybody tired of the commodification of human beings? Is there anybody tired who's willing to say no to sexual exploitation of women? Is there anyone who's just sick and tired of being tired? Because what we want to do is we want to go, "Yes Jesus, yes Jesus, yes Jesus", but we're not willing to say no. Until you're willing to say no to Pharaoh, you cannot say yes to Jesus.