When I was a child, my father taught me how to hold hands.
Apparently, I had a habit of offering a “limp fish” hand. When he tried to correct this tendency, I swung to the opposite extreme—my hand becoming a boa constrictor, squeezing the circulation from his fingers.
That’s the story that came to mind this morning as I thought about a word.
Months ago now, a good friend came over to help me repair my sink. He is a carpenter by trade but handy with most things. As we worked amiably together, liquid gold streaming in through the open back door, I asked him his favorite tool. He responded with a question (one of the favorite tools of Jesus, as it happens): “Do you have a favorite verb?”
Choosing a favorite tool as a carpenter, he was implying, is no easier than choosing a favorite word as a writer. We come to love the beautiful instruments of our trade. I pressed, and so did he.
His favorite tool, as it turns out, is an ancient one—the plumb line, a tool that’s been around at least since Amos was penned. I chose three verbs, only two of which I now remember: “romp” (because I’m a forest sprite at heart) and “yield.”
Yield.
Why that word? It’s not because I have a love affair with traffic signs, trust me. It’s because I’ve been thinking a lot about life with God.
Talking Back to the God Who Can Be Moved
I think we misunderstand some of the most often quoted words of Jesus. The ones that go: “Not my will, but yours.”
Jesus had to learn Scripture like the rest of us. He grew up memorizing vast swathes of the Torah, Prophets, and Writings—evidenced by how often the Psalms and Isaiah appear on his lips. As a boy, he would have listened, wide-eyed, to stories of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Jonah, and Daniel. Through the Psalms, David taught him to pray.
That means at least one thing: Jesus’ earliest examples of faith included people who tried to change God’s mind—and succeeded.
Here’s a small sampling:
In an exchange that would be comical if not for the stakes, Abraham bargains for Sodom, negotiating God down from 50 to just 10 righteous people as the threshold for pardon.
After the golden calf debacle, God is so grieved (because the Israelites have done the equivalent of committing adultery on their wedding night) that He threatens to destroy them—and Moses argues God into relenting.
Jacob wrestles with God, demanding a blessing, and seems to receive one—along with a new name: Israel.
When God tells Hezekiah he will soon die, Hezekiah pleads—and is granted 15 more years.
When God tells Habakkuk He’s going to use the Babylonians to judge his people, Habakkuk accuses Him of injustice and climbs a watchtower to wait for a response, which he receives.
And in Numbers 27, God amends the law in response to five sisters who argue that daughters, not just sons, should be able to receive an inheritance. (A truly outrageous thing in a patriarchal society.)
And don’t even get me started on the Psalms.
All these stories testify: God honors people who earnestly disagree with Him. Faith isn’t passivity. It’s not simply going along with God. Jesus grew up knowing that the call to obedience is nuanced by a reality that seems almost unthinkable—the all-powerful, all-knowing Creator actually weighs our desires and words. When we contend with him, he engages.
Sometimes I hear people make statements (from what I believe is a desire to live faithfully) that boil down to: “Whatever God wants.” I believe in—and hope for—the day, perhaps near the end of a long-lived life, when my heart will be so conformed to God’s that I can echo those words honestly, sincerely, and serenely. A day when I am so free from my other attachments that only Jesus matters.
Perhaps others have already arrived at that place—run ahead and reached the tomb before me. But sometimes, I sense behind those words a kind of self-abdication. Rather than naming and holding their desire before God, in all its longing and fragility, they sidestep intimacy under the guise of surrender. They miss the opportunity to more deeply know and be known by God. And that is a loss, indeed.
Maybe that’s why we find Jesus contending in the garden.
Here’s a point we often forget: Immediately before the words, “Not what I will, but what you will,” Jesus is asking the Father to change his plan. It’s not some half-hearted request either; he’s sweating blood.
This is the entire reason Jesus has come—for this hour. For this moment. And Jesus says, in effect, “You’re God. You can do anything. Please make another way.” Jesus is expressing his will. And in a mystery I can make no sense of, his will is not (in this moment) what the Father wills.
He wants something different.
Jesus is no limp fish. If we are to follow him, that means we must not be, either.
Choosing the Heart of Stone
There’s an opposite danger, of course. Being like the snake.
I once heard a story—likely apocryphal—about the Crusaders. As they were baptized, they held their swords above the water. Their actions said: “You can have all of me—except this. The violence I will enact is mine.”
In the name of country and religion, the same people who claimed to follow a rabbi who refused to be crowned an earthly king and practiced creative, subversive pacifism went out to kill image-bearers God infinitely loves. Their sword, God could not have.
Absurd.
And yet, let anyone who has not held something above the water—a relationship, habit, right, dream, reputation, salary, possession, or career—throw the first stone. I venture we all know what it is to refuse to submit something.
It can be hard for me to notice this impulse in myself because (besides the fact that I find others’ specks easier to spot than my logs) it often doesn’t look like blatant defiance. In fact, it’s usually most apparent in what I don’t talk to God about.
I feel it most in my speech, spending, and time. Sometimes I don’t bring God my desire to defend myself because I fear love means seeking to understand more than to be understood. I don’t ask about the purchase beyond my needs, afraid He’ll tell me to give the money away. I avoid consulting him before binging the show or declining the costly commitment, afraid He’ll ask me to use my time differently.
By quietly cutting Him out, I rob Him of the chance to say “yes” to and bless some of my desires—and to trade others for better goods for which I’m still acquiring a taste.
Sometimes, of course, my defiance is less subtle. Sometimes it’s like a dog growling over a bone. When God comes near something in my life—nudging, stirring, disturbing my soul—I grow angry, resentful, bitter. Mine, I growl. You can’t have it. I demand what can only be given. I prioritize the gift over the Giver. To paraphrase Judges, I do what is right in my own eyes.
You know what’s interesting?
Behind this willfulness is almost always fear. It’s like I can’t quite believe that God can dream up a better story than I can. I don’t trust that He wants to give me good gifts. I am busy trying to architect the pain out of my life, trying to force the universe to conform to my will.
I alternate between telling God that if he really loved me, he’d do it my way and deciding he doesn’t love me, so it’s all up to me. In other words, I oscillate between manipulation and self-sufficiency. In both cases, I’m grasping for control. And control, it turns out, is the real issue.
The Yielded Way
When Jesus or these praying prophets came before God to try to change His will—to change His mind—their posture is deeply relational. They demonstrate that yielding, at its core, is about trust, togetherness, and participation.
First, they often appeal to God on the basis of who he is. They say, in effect: “I know this is who you are. Show yourself to be who you are by acting in this way.” These are moments of profound faith—believing that God is who he says he is and that he cares for his people.
They’re also always talking with Him. God seems to love that four-letter word. I wonder if it’s one of his favorites. Emmanuel—God with us—came that we might be forever restored to life with him. He is forging a family so we can be with each other. (A vision he’s so committed to that it is the backbone of his prayer on that same night in that same garden.) And God doesn’t just want to make the world new. He wants to make the world new with us.
The yielded heart chooses to be with God. First, in naming honestly and fully its felt desire and emotional reality. And then, again by choosing trusting obedience, walking the path at hand if God (as in the case of Jesus) continues to will something we would not have chosen.
And yielding always gives way to participation. It says, “Okay, we’ll do it your way.” Having been seen, heard, known, and held, the yielded heart joins in with whatever God is doing—with body, heart, mind, soul, and strength. It doesn’t just resist insisting on its own way. It actively chooses God’s way.
And then, though it may take time, something beautiful happens. We experience the second meaning of that little word, yield.
We become fruitful. Our lives yield fruit. Fruit of the best kind: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.
The yielded way, in the end, is the narrow way. The one that leads, at last, to the life we long for.