The Surrendered Life

I think as long as I can remember I grew up singing the song "I surrender all." In case you don't remember it the words are easily sung; "I surrender all to Jesus, all to Him I freely give. I will ever love and trust Him in His presence daily live. I surrender all! I surrender all! All to Jesus I surrender, I surrender all!" I can't remember when I quit singing it but somewhere along the line I recognized that I could not sing that in good faith. It's so easy to say or sing, "I surrender all" but actually surrendering the things we care about the most is very, very hard. When I do sing the song today I change the words to "Help me surrender all..." You can imagine that changing the word "I" for "Help me" is a mouth full and doesn't sing very well but at least I am being honest.

I'm not sure what we think of when we think of surrender to the Lord. Truthfully I guess most of the time we are not putting anything specific in our minds represented by the word "all." Some of the easier surrenders are money. Most unbelievers think that all the church wants, and maybe by extension, all God wants is their money. But it is not really your money that is hard to surrender. Maybe a bit harder is the thought of surrendering our time. For many of us our time is more valuable than our money. We treasure it more. But truthfully I think the hardest thing to surrender to God are our dreams. What do you dream of in this life? What would you like to see happen with your life? For some of us it's the American dream-- a life of financial ease and all the pleasures that will bring. For others it might be the freedom to do what I want and go where I will. For still others of us its a relationship that we dream of. When we start thinking about surrender as the surrender of our dreams to God surrender takes on a whole new dimension.

But the truth is the Christian life is about surrendering all of who I am to all of who God is and that means bringing my dreams under subjection to His will, His desires for my life. But oh how hard it is! I think of Jesus struggling over this very issue in the garden of Gethsemane the night he is to be arrested and then die on a cross. So agonizing was His emotional pain than the Bible says the capillaries in his skin burst and He was sweating drops of blood. We must never think that surrender is easy or something to be taken lightly. Surrender is painful even when we muster enough faith to trust God and take Him at His Word that His Will will in the end be the best.

For a long time I have known that God is asking me to surrender a dream to Him. Actually it's not just a dream but it is my only dream. I guess since I was a very young man I have only had one real dream and God is asking me for it. He's been asking me for some time, maybe all my life, do you love me more than your dream? One thing about God is he really doesn't like any competition. He expects to be number one but if I'm honest he has a right to that spot. He's my creator and He's a creator who loves me and actually cares for me greatly. So much so that he lowered Himself to be my Savior. He suffered greatly that I might know His love for me and now invites me to be a part of His family-- to be in relationship with Him that will be eternal and beyond anything I imagine. He has a right to first place in my heart though I struggle with giving it to Him.

What really makes it hard is that I see Him give my dream to others! Why can they have it and not me? I guess that is a question I will have to ask Him at a later date-- for now it's "Do you love me more than your dream? Can you surrender to Me?"

So Lord Jesus, I say as I have for a long time now, "Help me surrender all. Help me ever love and trust you and in your presence daily live."