Surrender Isn’t Passive — It’s Directional (The Ibiza Story That Changed Me)

Surrender isn’t passive — it’s directional.

In this episode of All God’s Grace, we’re talking about what surrender to God actually looks like… and why so many of us think we’re “letting go” when we’re still trying to control the outcome.

Using scripture like Philippians 4, Matthew 7, and Psalm 55, we break down how surrender is an active decision — something you do through prayer, trust, and the way you show up in your life.

We also talk about a powerful transformation from Mike Posner, who rewrote his hit song I Took a Pill in Ibiza into a new version that reflects his faith and points directly to God. His story is a real-life example of what it looks like to stop chasing and start surrendering.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why surrender is not passive
• What the Bible actually says about giving things to God
• The difference between peace and pressure
• How to stop forcing outcomes
• And how to let God lead your next move (even in big decisions like buying a home)

If you’re in a season of decision, stress, or trying to let go of control… this episode will challenge and encourage you.

 Takeaways

• Surrender involves active trust and action, not passivity.
• Biblical verses like Philippians 4:6, Matthew 7:7, and Psalms 55:22 emphasize verbs—ask, seek, knock, cast—that highlight the importance of action in faith.
• Personal stories illustrate how surrender can lead to inner peace and fulfillment.
• Practical advice for applying surrender in real estate decisions, including prayer and trusting closed doors.

Chapters

00:00 The Active Nature of Surrender
12:25 Finding Fulfillment Beyond Fame
17:55 Surrender in Real Estate Decisions
 

Resources

Ed Mylett Podcast with Mike Posner - https://www.edmylett.com/podcast
Mike Posner's 'I Went Back to Ibiza' Song - https://music.apple.com/us/album/i-went-back-to-ibiza/1440849274
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl - https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Search-Meaning-Viktor-Frankl/dp/080701429X
AmSpirit Business Group - https://amspirit.com

Hosted by Kendra Carter
Kendra Carter is a Realtor® serving Central Ohio, helping clients navigate buying, selling, and investing with clarity and confidence.

📍 Real Estate: @KendraSellsColumbus
🎙️ Podcast & Community: @AllGod’sGracePodcast

Follow along for real estate, real life, and conversations that meet you where you are.

This episode is sponsored by Alec Moore, LD, RD and https://www.instagram.com/nutrition_collaborative/

Inquire about coaching here: https://www.nutritioncollab.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we are talking about something that sounds like real estate, but it's actually about surrender. Because one of the biggest misconceptions about faith is that giving something to God is passive. We just say, Jesus, take the wheel and sit back. But scripture shows us something very different. Surrender is actually an action. It's something we actively do through prayer, through trust, and through the way we show up in our lives. And I recently heard a story that illustrates this perfectly. Welcome back, everybody, to all God's grace. Kendra Carter here. And as usual, I'm excited to be here with you and share with you what God has laid on my heart. So I want to dive right in. I had been marinating on our topic today, and I was driving back from my mom and dad's over the weekend, and they live out in the country. So on my way home, I left my kid there. So I had a peaceful, quiet drive home, and I thought to myself, let's find a podcast. And I most of you know I'm a realtor, but I'm in this wonderful real estate coaching group. And we share all the time what we're listening to, what's motivating us. And one of the guys in the group recently shared Ed Milet. He is a fantastic motivational speaker, kind of in the class, like Tony Robbins kind of material that he puts out on the web. And I was just scrolling through and he had a recent episode with Mike Posner. I don't know if I'm saying his name right. So excuse me if it's Posner. Mike Posner. And that immediately popped in my head because I had seen on my algorithm lately the new song that he put out. It's called I Went Back to Ibiza. And if you recall, he had a song called I Took a Pill in Ibiza. Gosh, over 10 years ago. That is insane in bananas. But I started listening to this podcast with Ed, and even Ed was shaken because it got right off into the topic of spiritual awareness and clarity, and just how Mike changed his life through these chaotic experiences that he was living in his height of celebrity and fame when he was on tour. So the song specifically, I took a pill at Ibiza, was, and if you don't know it, you can find it very easily out on all the listening apps, but it was about fame, partying, and realizing that even success and recognition don't fill the deeper hole in your life. And that's even in the song. So Mike goes on to talk in the Ed Milet podcast about he had everything. He had the body, he had abs. He had millions of followers on the socials and his tours were sold out. And he had relationships, surface level that he said were just empty. And he recalls multiple times where he questioned, like, why am I living? Like, what is my purpose? And he stepped away from the limelight entirely. And he took one of the lyrics in his songs. The new song is 10 years sober. So he has taken time away from the limelight, from the fame, from the celebrity from Los Angeles, and found himself. So the new lyrics, I went back to Ibiza. He talks about being older, sober, leaving LA, and realizing that the path he was on was not fulfilling. It was fake. It was smiles and wonderful, but he had nothing in his heart that he was actually living for. And if you don't know Ed Milet and you don't know Mike Posner, I totally, I'm gonna link it at the end of this podcast, but the podcast itself almost brought me to tears. And then, of course, after I finished the podcast, I went and I listened to the song, went back to Eviza, and I was crying. I was crying on my way home because I could feel the amount of surrender that he has given in his life to God to make the change so that he can feel whole. So he says something in the song that just a couple of the lyrics. I just want to shine my light. I want to give what I got to the world and then go back home. And later he says, I'm gonna give my life up to God. That is surrender. That's what I mean by he did a full 360, going from I took a pill in Ibiza and the rest of the lyrics there, which, like I mentioned, were partying and the non-fulfilling surface level fun things that he was experiencing and he gave it all up to start a different path. So what he continues to go into on this podcast with Ed is he wasn't disappearing from his life and he wasn't stepping away from the world, but simply showing up differently in it. And if you've been here for a while on the podcast, I've talked about this before. You don't necessarily hide or dim your shine, you just use it differently. And that's what he was trying to portray with the new song I Went Back to Ibiza. So he also talks about his newfound MO is not what he's taking from his audience because that's what he says was his thing. He wanted the love, the vibes, the feels from where he was going in the audience. That's what he was craving. And he used this clarity in this spiritual shift to say, you know, it's not what I'm getting from the audience, it's what I'm able to give to them. So this is where surrender becomes really practical because people often say things like, I'm just gonna give it to God. And scripture shows us that it's not passive. You can't just throw up your hands and say, Jesus take the wheel and peace out. It is an action. Just another plug for one of my groups that I'm in. I'm in a marketing group. It's called Am Spirit. If you're a business owner, totally encourage you to come. I go Wednesdays at 7:30 a.m. But one of the gentlemen in the group, his name's Jacob Michaels. He's really great at uh social media. He helps businesses run advertising ads and things like that. But he really spoke to me. I think it was two or three weeks ago now. He was presenting, showing us what he does for his clients. And he is actually the one that put this in my headspace. The whole idea that giving your life to God is not passive. It has to be active. Give is to do something, it's a verb. It's not just pray and release and good things will come. You have to demonstrate the effort. So I continued down this theme of giving to God and making actionable, actionable steps. And the Mike Posner thing just was so much clarity of that in action. Action in action. So Mike stepped away from the fame, the money, the millions, the millions of followers. And he actually, this was his thing. I'm not saying I'm gonna be doing this. He walked across America and he climbed Mount Everest, literally climbed Mount Everest. See why I'm not gonna do that. Love that for him, but and not saying he climbed Mount Everest to show his faith in God, but what he was trying to do is find fulfillment and inner peace in something that wasn't this world of party and emptiness that he was in. So he was searching for himself and for clarity. So this idea of surrender being an action and not just something you can let go of and Jesus take the wheel. I dug deep and I found three scriptures that really resonated me with me on this topic. The first one is Philippians 4, 6. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God. Present again, we have an action. You actively bring the decision to God. So another one is Matthew 7, 7. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you. Ask, seek and knock. Are you seeing the theme here? Those are verbs, those are actions. You have to do them. It's not just let it go and let God, which I do like that phrase, but um, we're talking about the action here. So those are the verbs. Faith participates. Okay. Last one for now. I think this might be the last one though. Psalms 55, 22. And again, I heard another Psalms today. Maybe it was on the Bibles app, but I feel like Psalms is just my life right now. That's where I've I've been living in the Bible. So Psalms 55, 22 says, fast your burden on the Lord and he will sustain you. Cast. Guess what? Another verb, another action. So cast, the definition is actually to throw, to throw something off of yourself. You cannot hold on to something tightly and give it to God at the same time. Surrender is intentional. It's choosing who carries what you're holding. Just so great. I love this topic. I feel like this is such a good summary and like an end cap to my last six months because, like Mike's story, I went through this. Now, my my dark season wasn't my last 10 years. Those were actually my thriving seasons with my family, my husband, the kids. Georgie is 10 now, Bradley is six. He's five. I'm I'm not looking forward to him turning six. I want more babies. But anyway, kind of bringing this to a finale, this part of the podcast for today, they continued to talk in the Ed Milet podcast. And this was Mike's thing. He talked about your emotional set point. And to me, this really started to be like a full circle moment because I don't know if you know this about me, but one of my other hobbies is I'm a little bit of a yoga nerd. And part of one of the trainings that I went through, we had to read Victor Frankel and Search for Meaning. And that was pretty cathartic in the season of my life. I started my first 200 yoga teacher training right after my divorce. And I'd say it wasn't in, it definitely wasn't in the thick of my divorce, but it was perfectly timed actually. It was after the tears and the anger and the frustration settled, but I was still kind of in that where do I go from here? Who am I now? And this book, Man's Search for Meaning, again, another one of those things on your checklist for day. So you have to watch the Ed Milet podcast. You have to look up the new song and the old one for reference for Mike Posner, and then read Man's Search for Meaning. But in that book, the main character goes through horrific things in his life. And the idea is as long as you know your why, you can always find the joy. You can always find the upside. So Mike Posner in the podcast talks about how he went from a generally depressive demeanor to this place of constant ability to feel joy and happiness and that ability to pour out into people instead of the sad and needing that validation from external sources. He was able to find it within himself. And I just really love how he talked about that in regards to your emotional set point. And again, this is something that came up in my yoga teacher training, where the more you do the good and the more that you reframe to feel better, the ability is there to change your mood, your status quo. There are people in my life that are kind of always down here. And then there are people that I know that are always up here. And Mike's whole point is that you can train yourself out of the low. You can. And I just thought that was so cathartic because I remember a stage. And again, there's a podcast for it. Go back to the divorce podcast. But there was just a time when everything I took personally, I would flip out. I really high anxiety. Everything was up here. And that wasn't the happiness meter, that was the chaos, the anxiety, but this idea that through surrendering to God, you can do a complete 360 and actually change your emotional set point to this baseline of joy and happiness and this mindset of what do I have to give? Not where can I take what I need in this season, or where can I get the validation that I'm looking for. So it's just this shift in what can I give back? I just love that so much. Just a quick pause to share with you our sponsor for today's episode, Alec Moore, registered dietitian with Nutrition Collaborative. What I love about Alec is my husband and I are both working with NC at this point, but he gives us weekly workouts, weekly nutrition guidance, and then checks in with us. I'm on Fridays, but he keeps us working hard and he keeps us honest with our macros. If you have questions or interested in working with Alec and his team at NC, follow the link at the bottom of the show notes. Back to the show. So I want to pivot here and show you how surrender can actually show up in one of the biggest decisions people make in their lives, where they live, buying a home. You know it. I had to bring it back to real estate. I want to give you a few tips on how to let God choose your next house. And if you have ever bought a house, you know how emotional it can be. You walk into a kitchen and suddenly you're picturing the holidays, or you look out in the backyard and see a fence and see your dogs chasing each other or chasing a toy. You actually start to feel the feels when you see a house that meets those qualifiers or anything on your checklist. And before you know it, you're emotionally attached to something that might actually not be right for you. But what if we approach that decision a little differently? And instead of asking, is this the house I want? ask God, is this the house you want for us? And I truly love this because I pray over all of my clients in that God will keep their decision whole. And, you know, I often say a lot, it's not meant to be. Um, or it is meant to be. If it's meant to be, it'll be, it will be. But really, I am praying over my clients and praying for protection and for the right decision. So the first tip we're going to go into is don't confuse pretty with peace. Just because a house is beautiful doesn't mean it's the right one. Pretty is not the same as peace. Sometimes the house you want is actually the one that God is protecting you from. So just keep that in mind. That idea of wanting something is not always going to serve us well, which goes into the second one. Don't force doors. If you have to manipulate the outcome, stretch your finances beyond wisdom, ignore red flags, or convince yourself something is right. That's usually pressure, not peace. And God's best rarely requires panic. And I love this so much because thankfully we're in a little bit of a quieter market now where I mean things are starting to ramp up because seasonality, spring, and summer listings are coming up. There were 67 coming soons on the market this morning, which just means 67 sellers are raising their hands saying, Hey, we're gonna be active soon. So put us on your calendar. So they're actually getting ahead of just being active on the market. But this idea that inventory does peak in spring and summer, but in the past five years, we're we're getting away from it now. We would see, especially here in central Ohio, we would see multiple offers, buyers waiving inspections, buyers offering appraisal gaps, literally saying, I am willing to give you X amount of dollars over the appraised value because I want this house, which means they have negative equity. They paid more than the house is worth. So thankfully, we're getting away from that. And hopefully this next season doesn't bring a lot of that chaos or panic, but certainly slowing down, speaking with your realtor about what are your non-negotiables? What are the things that you need in the next house? And then actively praying on that search so that you don't get in this situation where you're panicking and forgetting about these big ticket things that aren't going to serve you well, like skipping inspections. I'm not saying appraisal gap won't serve you well because you never know what the situation is, but panic. Just slow down the panic so that you can have a clear mind. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that the transactions are going to be slow. You might have to make some quick decisions, but that's even better reason to deep dive with Jesus. Start journaling about your house hunt or your house sale so that you can get ahead of the process with Jesus as well, which is number three, invite God into the process. And this is where the earlier verses come back. You can literally pray, God, if this house isn't right for us, close the door clearly. Protect us from emotional decisions, give us the peace where there should be peace and conviction where there shouldn't. And that's what it looks like to actually present the decision to God. That's loud. That's a lot. That's a lot. And then number four is to trust closed doors. Sometimes the deals fall apart. And I have had a month. I have had a month, inspection issues, financing, financing problems. Another buyer gets the offer, multiple offer situation, but closed doors are often protection. We just don't see it yet. And that's a universal concept there. Relationships, buying a house, jobs, final takeaway. Here's the bigger lesson. This episode actually isn't about houses. You know that. I just tied it in because it felt appropriate, but it's about surrender. It's about letting God lead the decisions that shape your life. Mike Posner, again, quoting his last song I just want to give what I got to the world and then go back home. That's the shift that surrender creates. You stop asking what other people owe you or what the world owes you, and you start asking what God has given you to give. And I mean, that's why I'm here. That's why I'm doing the podcast. I'm bringing my experiences, the things that I've learned to you. But keep in mind that you do have the power to change your emotional set point and you are able to give it to God. But know that it's not just a prayer hearing. There, it's action. You have to show up, you have to abide, you have to be a disciple. You can pull yourself up from a situation that's not meant for you. If this episode spoke to you, send it to someone who's in a decision season right now, whether it's a move or a career shift or something bigger. And if you're house hunting, remember this just because you can qualify for something doesn't mean you're called to carry it. Let God lead the door that you walk through. And thanks for listening to all God's grace. Don't forget to like, comment, and share this podcast. Until next time.