Try vs Surrender
- Chris White
- Nov 9, 2025
- 9 min read
Ever since they could understand what it meant, I’ve told my sons all I really wanted from them was “the try.” And I had good reason. I always believed that leading them in this way would liberate them from a fear of failure and cultivate in them a love of learning.
(In case you didn’t know, the only way we really learn is through failure, so it’s important, if you want to grow to maturity, not to fear it.)
But that was then. Now, at this stage of my own journey, I’ve developed a couple of questions:
What happens when we compare the try to surrender? Are these ideas at war with each other?
And what about seasons of dormancy? Those are very real, so how do they figure in?
Have I been wrong about guiding my sons toward the try all this time?
Try vs Surrender
A dormant plant can appear dead above the surface yet remain alive below. Is it still trying? Depends on how you define the try. We’ll look into that in a sec.
Positive surrender (letting go of stuff that’s killing us, even if, like addicts, we’ve trained ourselves to love it) is a core value of faith in Christ if there ever was. But letting go is sometimes the only way for us to try.
So, that’s nice and confusing.
But let’s tangle even more strands together up front, shall we, because there is also a tyranny of doing for its own sake—of gleaning your whole worth and identity from setting and meeting goals. There is a success that comes prepackaged with an agony only realized once you reach the pinnacle that this kind of success would never have satisfied in the first place. Too often it manifests as a life wasted. And I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
But there’s even more, and this part amounts to a confession: I’ve often parroted the bumper-sticker wisdom that “living things grow.” Sounds smart. Sounds like the tagline from a professional-development podcast. I’ve noticed something that disturbs me, however, which is that this phrase is usually bandied to justify ruthless goalsetting/doing, especially when something’s being done for its own sake or to glorify the self.
It’s like we’re saying, Look, Dad, I’m being mega productive. Aren’t I awesome, and in Your Name, etc. That’s us, masterminding cities rendered in damp sand on a beach, our backs to the rising tide.
It has always baffled me that people stake so much of their allotment of time and energy on a world that’s just as finite as their allotment of time and energy.
Like many things in life, clarity comes only when you nail down your purpose. That is, your reason for doing it.
This is my hypothesis: I think it’s possible to try while in a state of surrender. But let’s do a little digging into the meanings of some words (i.e. ideas) to find out why that may be.
What does it mean to try?
In one sense, try is actually quite a young word, at least in comparison to others in the English language that date from well before the time of Christ. When we use “try” to mean an effort to accomplish something, that sense of the word only dates from about 400 years ago. Does that mean the try is a young idea? I don’t know. Define young. But do it from God’s perspective. Young or not, it’s worth noting because if ideas have a spiritual source, I think it matters where they’ve come from.
Try can mean an effort, an attempt to accomplish, but it gets tricky when we stir in a little context: Try can also mean to exert strength, to test, to subject to severe trial, to purify or refine, even to examine against the law before a judge.
I think, depending on our why, we can swerve into God’s territory with our try. I never want to do that because, in my experience, it leads to isolation and frustration.
Now, I’m not gonna make a list of all the biblical proofs that God is our strength (and ours is trash), so here are just three examples:
Pop quiz: whose strength are we using when we try? Answer: it depends on your why. In all you do, do you seek the will and glory of your Maker? Or are you just looking out for yourself?
Also, listen—we don’t run from testing, we are not those who turn back, but we don’t call it on like we’re the greatest thing since sliced bread. And, even though we’ve been made in the image of God, we are not equipped to try in the sense of putting someone on trial or exerting our puny will over—I don’t know, let’s use time as an example of something insurmountable for us that God controls with a Word.
I’m not advocating for human inaction or laziness. We have agency. We are image bearers. But we were never commanded to be self-sufficient (that would be idolatry/pride). There’s a thin line between the try that’s an honest attempt to honor God’s investment in us and the try that presumes to take the throne and do His job for Him.
What does it mean to surrender?
Almost every definition of surrender includes the word yield, which is super interesting to me because a yield can be a result, what you get at the end of a process, or the sum total of a harvest.
To surrender is to yield to the power of another, to yield to the possession of another, to yield to any passion, influence, or power, to deliver up to another under the law, even honoring justice by giving over some property or possession. If we combine the senses of yield, it can be either surrender or the expected result of an investment of some kind of resource. The meaning, like many words, is context-dependent.
If you read a little further in your Bible, you’ll see that it says we are a slave to whatever masters us (2 Peter 2.19, John 8.34, Romans 6.16), and further, that Paul is totally okay calling himself a slave of Christ.
I take all that to mean that surrender, like the Kingdom of God, isn’t really ultimately much of a choice, when we finally see it for what it is. Instead, it’s a reality to which we must at some point acquiesce. It is an expected, reasonable result that we will one day walk into. I think we either ultimately choose surrender and are reconciled to the Father or, in refusing Him, we choose hell.
But I don’t think surrender is inaction. I think it is a positive action toward a positive thing. Like turning from darkness to light. If we don’t think of it like that, we’re too obsessed with what we’re laying down. Or too obsessed with ourselves. And our terribly important work.
In this way, our surrender is the yield of the work of God in us—or, in other words, surrender can be thought of as fruit. Refusing to offer a good yield has immense and—eventually—irremediable consequences.
Let the Dead Bury Their Own Dead
Today for the nth time I walked past a dead, bare tree that’s been leaning over the road for years now and thought, It’s time the neighbors cut that thing down. What if it falls on someone? This tree is like that famous tower in Pisa, only it’s ugly. Vines are beginning to climb it and claim it. Like most dead trees, it’s probably hollow and rotten inside.
I’m thinking about Jesus’ teachings on things that don’t bear fruit. In one story a gardener intervenes, saying he would dig around this unfruitful but otherwise seemingly healthy tree, spread manure, and give it another year. In other stories Jesus told however, plants or trees were so withered that all they were useful for was fuel. I guess at some point it’s too late, at least for the dead.
But it turns out there’s a big difference between dead and dormant.
What is Dormancy?
The word dormant in modern English comes to us via old French from an originally Latin word that means to sleep.
Remember when Jesus told the disciples that Jairus’ daughter was only sleeping? He spoke in the same manner about Lazarus’ death and later changed His language (from the concept of sleeping to the concept of death) so that the disciples could understand Him. Interesting how different our perspectives often are from His.
Seasons of dormancy are usually understood in terms of how organisms in the plant kingdom express it, but long seasons of dormancy are also found among insects, mammals (like bears), and even in geology (volcanoes can lie dormant).
Dormancy is a period of inactivity where normal physical functions are either dramatically slowed or even suspended for a time. A time of dormancy can be understood, at least in living organisms, as a time of rest. Actually, most creatures experience some version of dormancy (sleep) once a day—whether they’re diurnal or nocturnal, they need rest. And that includes creatures like us, who are made in the image of God.
Plants go dormant for much longer periods than we do, however, and they do this as a response to a lack of sunlight and warmth. Water is gathered in the roots, which conserves it and saves the above-ground foliage from major damage in freezing conditions. Holding water in the bulb or root ball helps plants to continue to thrive below ground. Their roots still grow below the surface. The life that is in them retreats to a place where it can survive until the inhospitable conditions change to something more favorable. But above ground, where many plants bear fruit, dormancy can often look like death.
However, when you zoom out and see dormancy as part of a larger process, it’s just another waypoint on the journey toward fruitfulness.
What is Fruitfulness?
For a word nerd such as yours truly, here’s where the plot gets juicy because really the word we’re after here is fructify. The true origin of our English word fruit is the Latin word fructus, which means “enjoyment of the harvest.” In fact, the Latin frui means “to enjoy.” Fructification is therefore the same as fruitfulness.
Jesus said we would bear abundant fruit, but what’s the plant’s role in fruitfulness? Plants don’t think, they don’t have a will, they don’t even have the breath of God the ruach) in them. So if a plant isn’t fruitful in due season, is it somehow rebellious and worthy of punishment? I wouldn’t think so, but let’s go further.
What’s the gardener’s role in fruitfulness? If he or she gives their best effort but the harvest is disappointing, have they failed as a gardener? I suppose that depends on a lot of variables, but the point I’m trying to make here is that neither the gardener nor the seed is responsible for the miracle of germination, growth, and fruitfulness. That’s God’s department (scroll up and see the different senses of try if you need to remind yourself).
And by the way, be careful how you apply this stuff. Jesus made it clear that the issue isn’t a lack of fruitfulness but a lack of workers—the fields have been white and ready for harvest for an age.
What the gardener is responsible for is providing the best possible conditions for fruitfulness. In other words, the gardener stewards the atmosphere; his or her work isn’t to do a miracle but to provide, in faith, the right conditions for a miracle.
And now that we have a basic understanding of fruitfulness, dormancy, surrender, and the try, let’s pay all this stuff off.
The Paradox of Process
Is it possible to try while in a state of surrender? See dormancy (I think it is).
I think we can learn a lot from the way God designed things. If a plant can continue to grow in invisible places even when the visible conditions are extremely harsh, so can we. It depends how you define the try.
Sometimes the try comes from a place of strength and clarity. Sometimes it’s a desperate, last-ditch effort at survival. And sometimes you get to do that every day, with no result other than deeper roots in the dark, where no one but God knows or even cares.
If the try requires abundant fruit, maybe seasons of dormancy are seasons of failure. But I think the eyes of faith see fruit even in the depths of cold, dark, dormancy. While there is life, hope remains. The objective is to keep believing even when the only way we can see fruit is by faith. Because if we let hope die in a season of dormancy, if we dim down into self-centered bitterness, we will rot from the core and be good for nothing but fuel for the living.
If we embrace the whole process of bearing abundant fruit, the gift of faith will carry us through seasons of dormancy, and life will leap from the ground in season, overcoming even death and the grave, bringing newness of life, abundant fruit, and life everlasting. Believe it.
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