Tear up your list and throw it away—what God has planned for you is better than anything you've dreamed of for yourself.

There is so much that we are incapable of understanding. So rest is found in trusting the Father.

Prayer is handing God a blank sheet that you have already signed and trusting him to fill it out as he sees fit.

God is not working to deliver to you your personal definition of happiness. If you're on that agenda page, you are going to be disappointed with God and you are going to wonder if he loves you. God is after something better—your holiness, that is, the final completion of his redemptive work in you.

What if the call to pray is a call to bleed as well as to receive blessing?

I need a place to let go and fall back from my familiar patterns and trust God to catch me.

We have to die, and the choice is ours. If we don't, we are still holding on to something. And if we are holding on, we aren't really following. Just sort of following. Standing around. [Oh God, what did I sign up for? This Christianity thing is hard. Deep breath . . .] The apostle Paul chimes in, too: I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Galatians 2:19—20)

But in resisting, we may actually be missing an invitation to take a sacred journey, where we let go of needing to be right and trust God regardless of what we feel we know or don't know.

Now we are in your hands. Do to us whatever seems good and right to you.”

How then can I answer Him or choose my arguments against Him?

As for you, if you direct your heart and lift up your hands to Him,

Into Your hands I commit my spirit; You have redeemed me, O LORD, God of truth.