Pastor Collier makes the wisdom of Fenelon accessible to a contemporary audience - and we desperately need it. Fenelon understood the need to surrender to God's will, to see suffering as a means of sanctification, and to simply love God and others.
Collier summarizes the truth Fenelon confronts us with: "there is a difference between what we think God should do for us and what God actually does for us. There is a difference between whom we imagine God to be and who God actually is. Becoming a follower of God is hard because it requires that we submit ourselves fully to a God who is other than us. We must let go of our insistence that we know best what we need. We must let go of our demands that God act when and how we demand" (2). Our disappointments with God come from our experience of God releasing layers of self-protection we build up in order to manage life and control God.
It is because our faith is weak and our love of self so strong, that we have to exert such great mental energy in order to grow in faith. If our faith wasn't so weak, the surrender would be easier. Fenelon counsels: "Abandon yourself entirely to God. Recklessly abandon yourself to God as long as you breathe on this earth. Let loose. You are in good hands. You can be self-abandoned because you will never be God-abandoned" (5).
But alas, we resist God by resisting humility. The truth is we are terrified to really follow God and the way of the cross. For we know: "To follow God, we must walk into the cross, and to walk into the cross is to walk into darkness and poverty, nakedness and death" (8).
Fenelon gives the kind of authoritative insight that we desperately need to hear: "Listen to me with this. Believe it. I know that when you taste this truth, it will seem bitter, but if you will hear it, it will feed your heart well. You will need to die to yourself, the ultimate impoverishment. But this death is the only true life, the only way to be filled. Trust what I am saying. Don’t I listen to your self-protective voice. That voice is the grand seducer. More powerful even than the serpent that deceived our mother Eve. That voice coddles you into being afraid to risk what God requires. Trust me: you will find happiness if you simply listen to and obey the other voice" (10).
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