I Surrender All

"I Surrender All"
Judson W. Van DeVenter, 1896

All to Jesus I surrender;
All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust Him,
In His presence daily live. 

Refrain:
I surrender all,
I surrender all;
All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.

 All to Jesus I surrender;
Humbly at His feet I bow,
Worldly pleasures all forsaken;
Take me, Jesus, take me now.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
Truly know that Thou art mine.

All to Jesus I surrender;
Lord, I give myself to Thee;
Fill me with Thy love and power;
Let Thy blessing fall on me. 

All to Jesus I surrender;

Now I feel the sacred flame.

Oh, the joy of full salvation!

Glory, glory, to His Name!

 In a time of deep emotion, when our feelings are high and nothing too difficult is looming on the horizon, it's pretty easy to say a big "yes" to God. But in the dark times, when nothing is clear or easily understood and everything seems to be at stake it can be oh, so hard to say "yes".

To "let go and let God" isn't so easy for those of us who like to be in control. We might be able to talk real big about how much we trust God, and of how He has complete control of our lives...and even believe it to be true. But when problems arise and life gets overwhelming we find out that WE were still gripping tightly to the controls; and that we don't even know which way to go. Even then, when we know there's nothing else we can do, it's so hard to turn it over to Him. We still rack our brains for any possible solution and drive ourselves crazy trying to figure it all out. 

But when we come to the end of ourselves and we can finally let God take over, we find...peace. More than likely we still have no idea how matters will turn out; but just trusting Him, knowing that He really can work it all out and believing that He has our best interest in mind, makes it all more bearable. If only we would realize this sooner rather than later! If we would do this at the first sign of trouble instead of waiting until everything is in such a mess, we would save ourselves hours of stress and worry. Because, even if nothing turns out like we think it should, we'll know that it's HIS plan. And His plans are always best.

Something that is even harder than turning over our problems to God is handing over control of...ourselves. It goes against everything in our human nature. We try to do it all. To be in control of ourselves and everything around us...and it never works. Unless we allow His Spirit to cleanse us, to mold and make us, we can never be whom He intended us to be.  Everything we try to do and every change we try to make will fail. He alone can truly change us and make us what we ought to be, and He can only do that if we allow Him to. If we surrender to Him.

Surrender is hard. Very hard. But if we will give ourselves, all that we have, our broken dreams, failed plans, and every problem we're dealing with to Him...to the One Who has all the answers, the One Who already knows how it'll turn out...we will find peace. He's promised it to us.