Somebody Take the Wheel

When my kids were little, my wife, Anne, and I took them to Newport Beach, California, for an oceanside vacation. One afternoon, while the family ate lunch, I took a much-needed break from parenting and went for a swim sans enfants.

Once I reached thirty feet from shore, I rolled onto my back and began lazily doing the backstroke. I was impressed with how fast I moved atop the gentle ocean swells. Why didn’t I go out for my high school swim team? I mused, feeling rather chuffed with myself. To my dismay, I soon discovered why I was zipping through the water like Olympian Michael Phelps — I was in the grip of a powerful rip current that was swiftly dragging me out to sea.

Realizing my perilous predicament, I panicked and pulled the ultimate rookie move — I frantically tried to swim against the current to get back to shore. But alas, the “rip” was too strong. Then I tried waving my arms and yelling for help to people on the beach, but no one looked in my direction.

Completely exhausted, I began picking hymns for my funeral when I caught sight of a lifeguard running down the beach parallel to the water, followed by a gaggle of morbidly curious onlookers interested in seeing if I’d survive or not. I had been summarily dropped into an episode of Baywatch. “Don’t fight the current. Let it carry you!” the lifeguard yelled repeatedly to me through cupped hands.

I remember thinking that this metaphysical-sounding advice wasn’t particularly helpful, given how dire my situation was. Who did this guy think he was, Deepak Chopra? To my surprise, however, my personal David Hasselhoff was right. I surrendered to the current until it gradually weakened, allowing me to swim to shore.

Step Three is called the “Surrender Step” because it’s about ceding control of one’s life to the Divine Current, or as Twelve-Step practitioners call it, “Letting go and letting God.” In fact, people describe the progression of the first three Steps as, “I can’t [Step One], God can [Step Two], and I think I’ll let him [Step Three].” If that’s not the gospel in miniature, I don’t know what is.

Step Three is the “turning point,” as Bill W. called it, the keystone on which the rest of the Steps are stacked. If you can’t successfully take Step Three, return to Step One and start again. Don’t feel badly if this is what you have to do. Though it sounds counterintuitive, going backward in the spiritual life can often result in going forward. Besides, there’s no point continuing doing the Steps until you wholeheartedly buy into Step Three.

Why? Step Three drives home to us that the Twelve Steps are not a self-help program. As my first sponsor in early sobriety said to me thirty-five years ago, “We are well past any conversation about you fixing you.” Your willpower alone is no match for your addictions, the vicissitudes of life, and the undertow your ego creates through its self-sabotaging behaviors. There’s no un-messing your messed-up life apart from surrendering the director’s chair to God and letting him run the show.

Sadly, people of faith often communicate mixed messages about who is responsible for what on the spiritual path. For example, when I was in high school and hearing the gospel for the first time, I remember being taught that the development of a godly character was dependent on grace, not personal effort.

I was told that all I had to do was give my life to Jesus and I’d be filled with the Holy Spirit and gradually transformed into the likeness of Christ. C’est fini! But then I went to church, where I heard a contradictory message. I’d hear the preacher proclaim, “It’s all grace!” but the unspoken subtext was, “But keep working to earn God’s love anyway!” Oh, why do we make things so difficult for ourselves?

When a person tells me they’re “trying to be a Christian,” I know they don’t understand the gospel, and their sneaky little ego is still at the wheel. You’ve met spiritually effortful people before, right? They’re working their rear ends off to be like Jesus. They’re always exhausted and feeling like they’re “never doing enough,” that they’re a disappointment to God, a spiritual poser, and they need to “shape up or else!” These are good people. They mean well. They’re just wrong.

Listen, the gospel is so easy we make it hard. It’s not about reformation but transformation! It’s about letting go. I know of no better definition for the word faith than this — “Let go!”

For the purpose of illustration, let’s talk about the parable of the prodigal son. Regardless of what someone believes about God, I’ve never met an addict whose eyes don’t tear up a little when they read or listen to this passage from Scripture. It’s the archetypal recovery story. In it, we have a kid who wants to play God and exercise total control over his own life.

The parable doesn’t say he was an addict, but dang, he sure acts like one. He’s narcissistic, selfish, demanding, entitled, childish, willing to mortgage his future to gratify his desires in the present, a suck on his family’s finances, and an all-around plonker.

But then we’re told the younger son looks at the mess he made of his life and “comes to his senses.” In other words, he hits bottom and admits he’s powerless over his addictions and that his life is unmanageable. That’s Step One! Then he comes to believe his father (God) could help him. Hello, Step Two!

Then he turns and heads home. Voila! Step Three!

And here’s a sidenote: folks don’t often see him this way, but the elder son in the parable of the prodigal son is every bit as much an addict as his younger brother. Like many people, he’s addicted to his warped thinking — his self-righteousness, jealousy, sense of moral superiority, self-pity, and resentment.

He has a twisted mental picture of his father. He sees him as unfair, a withholder of love, and unappreciative of his efforts to be the good son. This kid will also have to “come to his senses” like his younger brother did. He needs to meet his father again for the first time too.

When we rely solely on our own unaided efforts to give up our addictions and change ourselves into the likeness of Christ, we oppose the gospel of grace. That’s called reformation! Grace goes into action when we finally give up trying to save ourselves, when we turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him and let the current of Divine Love carry us. We surrender and trust. If you want to “do” something, try positioning yourself in that section of the river where the current of grace runs deepest and swiftest, and then lie on your back and relax. Paradoxically, when you finally muster the courage to say to yourself, I give up; I can’t do it, you’re given the power to do it. That’s called transformation!

Taken from The Fix by Ian Cron. Copyright Ian Cron© (January 2025) by Zondervan. Used by permission of Zondervan, www.zondervan.com.