I think I can honestly say we should sing the following song…
“Some to Jesus I surrender
Some to Him I sort of give
I will sometimes love and trust Him
In His presence sometimes liveI surrender some
I surrender some
Some to You my blessed Savior
I surrender some”
Surrendering all to Jesus just hasn’t been difficult for me all of my life. With all the major changes He threw my way over the past year, it’s been even harder to let go and surrender everything to Him.
I trust myself, I rely on myself, I can take of myself, I know myself and I love myself. But I have trouble trusting God, relying on God, allowing God to take care of me, knowing God and loving God. The problem is, I will always fail and He will never fail. In recent conversations, I’ve come to realize that I am the one that has failed time and time again in many areas, but that God has never once failed me. Just because He allowed blessings for a time and then took them away, doesn’t mean He has failed.
I have a feeling that very few people could meaningfully sing the actual words to that song…
“All to Jesus I surrender
All to Him I freely give
I will ever love and trust Him
In His presence daily liveI surrender all
I surrender all
All to You my blessed Savior
I surrender all”
It’s hard to surrender. It’s hard to raise you hands to God in surrender when the whole world has been turned upside down and you feel like the only thing you’ve got going for you is gravity. Well guess what? Gravity… that’s God’s faithfulness. You think that breath you just took was something you did? Nope… Turns out that’s God’s faithfulness too. Have you tried to create a Solar System latley? Some of you can’t even creat an Excel Spreadsheet let alone a planet. So when the tough times come (not if but when) and you think you can go it alone and you don’t need to surrender to God, be prepared for a thumping. I can honestly say from my own experiences that surrender is the only option.
Too bad we don’t do it more often…
My pastor yesterday compared the world to the “man behind the curtain” in the Wizard of Oz, promising everything and delivering nothing. The man finally is confronted by Dorothy and says “I’m not a bad man, I’m a very good man… I’m just a very bad wizard.” His point was that the world is not a very bad world–but it is a very bad God. If you expect the stock market or any of these other things the world has to offer to fulfill you, you will be disappointed. But God will not fail.
My dad has been saying we should sing that version of the hymn for years
He wants to write a whole book of “More Honest Hymns”!
It is hard (impossible?) to will ourselves to give everything to God by ourselves, but we do have times where our attitude is right and we want to give everything to him, and he can use that and change us still!