As you probably know, each issue of The Cry is based on one of our nine Lifestyle Celebrations. These are tenets we live by, spiritual disciplines we explore in community. These Celebrations are a helpful guide for reflection for our staff, and The Cry is one form of that.
In this issue (and there are more articles online), our staff reflect on the Lifestyle Celebration of submission. Perhaps more than any other of our nine Lifestyle Celebrations, submission needs context.
WMF staff around the world have friends who have been forced to submit to a life of poverty. Most of you readers have also observed distorted submission. In Celebration of Discipline, Richard Foster says, “Most of us have been exposed to such a mutilated form of biblical submission that either we have embraced the deformity or rejected the Discipline altogether” (113).
And so, it is difficult for many of us to think about choosing this thing called submission.
And defining a submission we want to celebrate is difficult. It’s like obedience but less a following of instructions. It’s like surrender but often less extreme. It’s a relinquishing of our own will, but not to a point that becomes destructive.
Foster gives an idea of what can come out of submission:
In submission we are at last free to value other people. Their dreams and plans become important to us. We have entered into a new, wonderful, glorious freedom — the freedom to give up our own rights for the good of others. For the first time we can love people unconditionally. We have given up the right to demand that they return our love. (112)
Submission is freedom to fully love others. That is a discipline I want to grow in, and one that we invite you to explore as well.
