I surrender All?

I was sitting in my office this afternoon taking a much needed break from study when I remembered that I had to do a study for Wednesday night prayer meeting. I was flipping through the bible trying to land on a verse for the evening study when the song I surrender all came across the i-tunes on my computer. That got me thinking about the idea of surrender. I turned to the hymnal where, over looked by most, is a verse that goes with each song. The selected verse for this song is Luke 18:28 which states, “we have left all we had to follow you! This is the words of Peter to Christ in a response to the issue of a rich man finding it hard to get into heaven due to the enormity of his own resources being in the way. Christ’s response to Peter was that what we will be given in eternity will pale in comparison to what we give up here on earth.

The question that plagues me tonight is why then, in light of that promise, is it so hard for us to truly surrender all to Him. Why then do we hold back so much, even sometimes secretly, thinking that our all knowing Father will not see. In the first verse of this song we promise when we sing that we will surrender all to Jesus, freely giving all to Him. We promise we will ever love and trust Him and we will live in His presence daily. The second verse is no easier to swallow when we state that we want our Savior to make us completely His property. We want to feel the presence of the Lord truly knowing that we are His. I don’t think we can handle going on to what we would promise in verse three of this familiar song.

What is the point! I believe that deep within us we want to surrender all we are and all we have to an awesome worthy God. I believe that we do want to be fully His. However, In order for us to truly surrender we must first lay down our arms. If we are going to truly surrender all then we must stop fighting. Stop fighting the repentance that we must make, stop fighting the service that we are called to pursue, stop fighting the places we are supposed to go and the ones we are called to reach out to. We also must stop fighting each other.

It is not so easy to promise this surrender when we fully understand what it means.

My prayer tonight is Lord show me how to truly pray, All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.