Backwards Design and the Journey to Destiny
You want me to surrender to what?!
This intrusive and persistent thought was the commissioning of my slow, torturous, and excruciating awakening (what I now call and revere as The Crushing for Christ) to God’s desires for my life. In order to arrive at His pre-destined purpose for my existence, submission to the learning experiences (trials and tribulations) and surrender (to yield) to His will were absolutely necessary and eventually became my constant companions on the treacherous trip to transformation.
For years, I practiced backwards design as an educator, identifying the desired outcome before planning the experiences necessary to achieve it. What I did not recognize was how powerfully this educational principle would illuminate my own spiritual journey. I began to understand that God was not merely concerned with where I would arrive. He was transforming who I would become along the way. The very circumstances I prayed for Him to remove became occasions through which I learned greater dependence upon Him.
The first and most important surrender of my life was my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Aside from that example, relinquishing MY OWN CAREER GOALS would probably rank within the top five. Friends recall that when I was in high school, I spoke of having a career in education. Those plans were solidified in college when I met my ex-husband, as we both selected that pathway for our careers. After six years in the classroom, being tapped for leadership roles, and later encouraged to pursue administration, I determined that I’d jump through all the necessary hoops to become a school level administrator and a district level leader. As I met those goals, my vision grew to include starting an educational consulting company and perhaps one day having my own school.
While on that career trajectory, the Lord allowed me to have some pretty rapid successes that earned me the respect of my colleagues as a visionary leader of change who produced results.
THEN…
I began experiencing what I perceived to be unusual obstacles and staunch resistance in the career I loved. My treacherous trip to transformation began with my first principalship. It came out of nowhere. Teachers signed a petition requesting I become the new leader of the school and I had the endorsement of my supervisor, the Principal who was leaving due to relocation. I was hired and given a set of critical benchmarks that had to be met in order to avoid the takeover of the school by the state department of education (DOE). A State DOE takeover was a stringent consequence assigned to a school that demonstrated persistently poor student achievement on state assessments over several years.
Without getting into all the weeds of that learning experience, I’ll fast forward to its ending. Under my leadership, the school met all the benchmarks. AND… My contract was non-renewed, which I fought by hiring an attorney to plead my case and seek justice for an unfair assessment of my performance and fit for the job.
I was devastated. I was disoriented. I questioned my identity as an educational leader. I was embarrassed. I felt ashamed. That non-renewal was an attack against the credibility I’d established as an effective leader. How would I now be perceived by my family, my friends, my colleagues, and the community at large? No one saw this coming.
My next educational assignment was as an Instructional Lead Teacher. Yes, that position is considered as teacher support and administrative. The Lord used this assignment to showcase my leadership and ability to get results, give me broader exposure and responsibilities, and catapult me back to the Principalship. Yet again, unusually vehement resistance resurfaced.
The following years produced similar results: high highs and then descents. BUT, I retained my educational career goals in my heart. After a major disappointment with what some would call an enviable position, I resigned due to my lack of willingness to forgo critical preparation needs for the sake of an opening timeline.
I applied for both administrative and teaching positions. I received an offer for a district-level position and a teaching position in two of the largest school districts in the state of Georgia. I sought God’s guidance and He answered, instructing me to accept the teaching position.
Now, I don’t want to mislead you and have you thinking that I was completely and utterly happy-go-lucky about going back into the classroom. Yes, I absolutely adore children and love teaching, but this was a considerable decline down the career ladder when you consider that enviable position I had prior to getting ready to teach again. I continually had to sacrifice my thoughts and feelings on God’s altar. No, I wasn’t going to renege on my surrender. But I need you to understand that the process was a gradual release.
And then one day I just awoke with immense peace and joy that consumed my spirit. I’m talking about true God given bliss.
I thought this assignment would resemble the earlier ones where I’d rapidly elevate back to the administrative level. As a matter of fact, when I interviewed for the teaching position, two of the interview panelists, during the interview, went to the Principal and asked if I could be hired for their vacant assistant principal position. Long story short, it didn’t happen at that moment, but I wasn’t dismayed. I was confident in my abilities and confident that God was up to something good for me.
I performed just as I had in my previous educational assignments and gained the respect of my colleagues. Yet, this time around I was stagnant and couldn’t advance to leadership despite my efforts, credentials, leadership performance, and having attained the respect of my colleagues. No matter how hard I continued knocking on the leadership door attempting to get back in, it appeared to be double-locked, with deadbolts on both sides. I was utterly bewildered and couldn’t figure out what was happening.
After around seven and a half years of being shut out, on one ordinary day, the Lord gave me the epiphany that what I thought about education… that it was the single most important factor that could change the quality of a person’s life was partially true. However, there was something even greater than that… the ultimate pathway to changing a person’s eternal destiny… leading people to Christ and assisting in their discipleship.
You want me to surrender what?!
You want me to surrender the career in which I’ve invested everything I have to do something I’m not even equipped to do? I must be misinterpreting His message.
You want me to abandon what I thought I understood about what you’re doing?
You want me to surrender my attachment to a particular outcome?
You want me to surrender my desire to control how my life should unfold?
You want me to surrender my expectation that obedience would protect me from disappointment?
BUT, I hadn’t yet surrendered. That’s a tall order!
I think the turning point for me was when I remembered some biblical examples of surrender and obedience.
Mary’s acceptance of the role of Jesus’ mother
Abraham’s acceptance of God’s instructions for him to sacrifice Isaac
A barren Hannah’s sacrifice of Samuel the Prophet to the service of the Lord
Jesus’ acceptance of his role as the sacrificial lamb when he said, “Nevertheless, not my will, but thy will be done.”
As I reflected on their experiences, I asked myself what if God has chosen me for something significant. Would I really be willing to turn my back on his request, knowing the expensive price he paid to save me? Unequivocally NO. I owe everything to him. That settled the matter in my heart.
Gradually, my patient and loving Jesus Christ made it more and more clear to me, and then one ordinary day, I said, “Yes, send me. I’ll go”. Although I felt and still do feel completely unqualified for this calling, I was then and continue to be overcome with “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” Philippians 4:7 (KJV).
I had mastered the practice of designing backward from a desired outcome, but surrender required me to release my own definition of the desired outcome.
That was the microscopic beginning of the work to which I vowed to dedicate the rest of my life.
I eventually came to understand that surrendering my career goals did not necessarily mean abandoning the profession to which I had dedicated so much of my life. Rather, it meant relinquishing my insistence that my life's purpose had to culminate in the professional achievements I had envisioned for myself. I had spent years pursuing positions, titles, and opportunities through which I believed I could make the greatest difference. What I had not fully considered was that God might be calling me to make a difference in ways I had never imagined. My surrender was not simply about changing my career trajectory, it was about yielding my understanding of success, significance, and purpose to His will.
SURRENDER TO HIS WILL AND HIS WAY HAD GENUINELY WON ME OVER.
Long before I encountered backwards design in education, Scripture had taught me that God knows the end from the beginning. He is the ALPHA and the OMEGA. My first introduction to it occurred in the early years of my leadership in education when Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe presented the instructional framework as a lesson planning model in 1998 in their popular book Understanding by Design. The model itself can be summarized in three phases:
Identify Desired Results: Determine the ideal outcome. What is the curriculum target (goal) and what does mastery look like (desired results)?
Determine Acceptable Evidence: How will progress towards the achievement of the goal be measured? What evidence will be used to document progress toward mastery of the goal?
Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction.What training (learning experiences and instruction) is needed to arrive at the desired destination or to achieve the goal?
As I reflected on my journey, I began to see how the three stages of backward design offered a meaningful framework for understanding my surrender.
Identify Desired Results: I began discerning a calling beyond conventional career advancement.
Determine Acceptable Evidence: A growing willingness to release control, obey, and pursue a different understanding of purpose became evidence of my personal change.
Plan Learning Experiences and Instruction: Professional disappointments and unexpected opportunities became occasions for growth and dependence upon God.
I’m reminded of Jeremiah 1:5 (KJV).
“Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”
In Jeremiah 1:5, God reveals that He knew Jeremiah before his birth and had appointed him to serve as a prophet to the nations. When Jeremiah protested that he was too young and did not know how to speak, God assured him that he would not undertake the assignment alone.
Jeremiah's calling was uniquely his. Yet his initial objection reminds me of my own response when I began to sense that God was directing my life toward a purpose I had not anticipated. I, too, questioned my readiness. I, too, had to confront the difference between my understanding of my qualifications and my willingness to obey.
In a nutshell, all of that explains the birth of The Yarber Institute for Surrendered Living, my unapologetic platform for proclaiming and extolling the sovereignty of Jesus Christ, our loving, compassionate, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and invincible Savior.
Before concluding, I would like you to consider the truth that surrender does not require people to remain in harmful circumstances or interpret every hardship as divinely appointed. Invite the Holy Spirit into your situation, ask for his guidance, pray, read the Scripture, ask him to send you people with wise counsel, and ask for discernment. Then, trust that he heard you, and have faith that he will respond.
What’s the practical application for you? Perhaps it begins with reflecting on these or similar questions?
What if the season you're resisting is revealing something God wants to develop in you?
What expectation, outcome, or desire for control might Christ be calling you to surrender?
How might your understanding of your current circumstances change if you viewed them through the lens of spiritual growth rather than immediate relief?
Welcome to The Yarber Institute for Surrendered Living.
This is a place for those who are learning that surrender is not the abandonment of purpose, but the yielding of our lives to the One who sees far beyond what we can see.
Wherever you are in your journey, I invite you to hold this truth close:
God Never Wastes a Surrendered Life.
In submission and surrender to Jesus Christ, My Lord and Savior,
Teresa
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