Recently, I stumbled across this quote from a book I wrote years ago, and it really struck a chord. The analogy of God as a Wild Raging River has been viscerally true to my experience of late, especially since leaving my comfortable home in the mountains and moving full time into my van. I wanted to share the brief excerpt with you here. It’s from my book Alone With God.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. (Matthew 16:25)

THE paradox of losing your life to find it might best be understood this way: Imagine a raging river full of white-water swirls and smooth dark boulders that cause the current to twist and churn. Now imagine yourself taking a running leap into the center of the current, plunging yourself into the torrent of rushing waters, and experiencing, as a result, the absolute loss of control over everything. In the beginning, that is how it feels to lose your life in Christ. It’s a sort of “baptism unto death,” if you can picture it that way. But that is just the beginning.

Once caught in the flow, once the shock of the water enveloping you with such force begins to subside, you soon stop your struggle against the current, and, quite suddenly, you find that you are more alive than you have ever been. It is a wild life, even reckless, but the River flows with a purpose you can only faintly imagine, toward a goal that you cannot see. In joy, you give yourself to the River, and, at last, you rest…allowing this Power so much greater than yourself to take over the matter of your existence. And in that rest—that Sabbath Rest—you find yourself at peace, sustained and moved by the River to which you have given yourself, fully and without compromise.

It is a miraculous transaction. And the only way to make it real is by letting go of everything, absolutely everything—including our fears and, especially, our tired belief that we must in some way remain “captain” of our own soul. The only way to true freedom and self-discovery is through absolute surrender and abandonment to the River that is God. This is the paradox that leads to life.