Surrender to Love

Short review: Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality by David G Benner (expanded edition)

There are five short chapters that take us from Love as starting place, to the proper understanding of Love and Fear in scripture, to one of the better explorations I have read of what it means to surrender to and obey a loving God, to how we are transformed by God's love, to how we become love to others.

The progress is very well structured and natural and not uncomfortably theological. Benner is a counselor and spiritual director. He is used to working with broken people that have a wrong conception of God. And so the obedience and submission chapter is so helpful in moving submission from obligation to surrender. We all want to be loved. As a perfect God, God is the only one that we can ever fully submit to. Fully surrendering to anything or anyone else, will result in frustration and disappointment. We are not surrendering out of duty or obligation but submitting to love that seeks after what is best for us, not trying to use us for their own purposes.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/surrender-to-love/