I Give Up

In this episode, Marcus Halley responds to a graduating student’s spiritual anxiety by asserting that surrender is the door to the spiritual life. Marcus shares that we all have a common experience of deep hunger: for meaning, connection, and love. He then contrasts trying to control God through formulas and practices with learning to surrender to God by cultivating practices of silence and listening. Drawing on Howard Thurman’s “A Seed Upon the Wind,” Marcus describes surrender as a long inner struggle that leads to a new life oriented toward God’s purposes. He suggests practices like community, contemplative prayer, spiritual direction, and gratitude as ways of embodying spiritual surrender.

Leslie Odom, Jr.'s "I Surrender": https://youtu.be/V26iETMaj8E?si=NlH99PdhdAlq5hw4

00:00 Introduction

01:55 How do I develop a spiritual life?

05:58 Howard Thurman’s “Seed Upon The Wind”

11:22 Tilling the Soil of Spiritual Possibility

12:11 Gratitude and Final Blessings

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