I Surrender All

There’s an old hymn from the 1890s titled “I Surrender All”.

It is a beautiful song and one of my favorites.

Part of the chorus says, “All to Thee, My Blessed Savior, I surrender all.”

 

I heard and sang that song for years without really understanding what it meant.

I knew what surrender was.

I knew I was committed to Jesus and to living a life that pleased Him.

But, deep down, I was still hanging onto things.

Things I hadn’t given Him yet.

Things I didn’t want to give Him.

Things I didn’t realize I needed to give Him.

 

Then I heard the words no one ever wants to hear, “You have cancer,”

Believe me when I say that will make you think about things you never thought about.

It will also make you look at a lot of things a lot differently.

 

It was like a light bulb went off in my head and I realized there were things I was holding on to that I didn’t know were there.

Unforgiveness. Frustration. Disappointment.

 

The only thing I could do about any of it was to give it to Christ.

Not in some, “Hey this is bothering me” way.

In a deep, honest, get it all out into the open kind of way.

Complete honesty and deep reflection.

Admitting my part in it.

 

It wasn’t easy.

I ugly-cried for days.

I cried over the realization life was not going to go the way I wanted it to.

I cried over the pain of past traumas.

I cried over the pain of my son’s addiction and how it was destroying his life.

 

Then I did the only thing I could do.

I said, “Here Jesus, you take this. I can’t fix it. I don’t know what to do with it. I’m tired of carrying it. I give it to you.”

One by one, I gave Him every single thing that came to mind – every situation, every disappointment, every frustration, every heartache.

Big things. Little things. Everything.

 

Immediately, a miraculous thing happened.

I felt lighter.

I felt more complete.

I felt more peace, both with Jesus and with myself.

 

I also clearly saw that I had been carrying all that pain unnecessarily,

I had thought I’d let it all go.

I hadn’t.

Instead, I had just accepted it happened and moved on.

That’s not letting go.

That’s denial.

 

Jesus doesn’t want us to deny our pain or our past.

He wants us to give it to Him so He can heal us of it.

We can only do that if we are willing to go to Him in full honesty about ourselves and our situation.

We have to be willing to invite Him in and then to show Him all the things we are struggling with.

We have to be willing to take accountability and responsibility for our part in it.

 

I wish I could say the things we surrender just magically disappear and are never seen or heard from again but that’s not the case.

Sometimes the bad habits and bad memories try to come back.

When that happens, we have to pray and give them to Him again – as many times as it takes for our minds to realize what our hearts and souls know – we have surrendered that to Jesus, it’s no longer ours;; it’s His now.

 

I still have things I have to surrender to Him from time to time.

Habits, attitudes, painful memories, current situations.

No matter what it is, every time I surrender it to Jesus, He takes it from me and replaces it with peace.

His peace. A peace that passes all understanding.

 

I know I will always have things to surrender to Him, that’s part of being human and living in a broken world, but I also know that Jesus is for me, working with me as I seek to let them go and to give them to Him.

As long as I keep honestly surrendering them to Him, He will keep healing me and giving me peace.

What a beautiful life full of peace that creates!

 

“I surrender all…”

 

What about you? Are there things you need to trust Jesus with?

Will you surrender them to Him today?

 

 

Want to hear the hymn? Find it on YouTube here – “I Surrender All”

 

Surrender – To yield or give up something and to give it to God, recognizing Him as a higher authority, releasing control and ownership over it, and allowing Him to completely have, control, and own it in every way.

 

Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken. Psalm 55:22 (NIV)

 

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 (NIV)

 

 

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Praying for My Kids

I pray for my kids every day.

I pray for their spiritual and physical safety.

I pray for their jobs, relationships, finances, and friendships.

I pray they will have courage, wisdom, boldness, kindness, peace, grace, and mercy.

I pray they will find favor in tough situations.

I pray they will step up and do what is right; that they will be honest, good people.

I pray they will draw closer to God.

When they mention something going on in their life I pray about that, too.

 

One thing I never, ever pray, though, is for overly specific things.

I never pray they will work this job or move to that place.

I never pray they will make a decision I think they should make or that they will do it one way or the other.

 

Instead, I pray and ask the Father to speak to their heart about which way they should go.

I also pray they will listen to Him and hear His promptings and follow His guidance so they will be in His will.

 

I try as hard as I can to practice this, even when I see them making foolish choices.

As much as I might want to say, “Lord, tell them No! Make them stop! They can’t do that anymore!” I instead ask Him to open their spiritual eyes, speak truth to their heart, and to help them see the choices they are making are hurtful.

I ask Him to give them wisdom and mercy and to protect them from their own poor choices.

 

Instead of trying to push my ideas, opinions, or choices on them, me asking Him to intervene points them to God and improves their relationship with Him.

It also strengthens both of our faiths because they grow closer to Him while I see Him working in their lives and answering my prayers.

 

When I pray and tell God what to do in their life or how I think things should go, I am setting myself up as god and trying to replace His authority and power with mine.

This is not prayer or help.

This is manipulation.

 

Manipulation – controlling or influencing something or someone in order to serve one’s own agenda or get desired selfish results,. Adjusting things so they turn out to your own advantage.

 

We are not supposed to manipulate.

We are supposed to surrender to God and to trust His perfect will and way of doing things in all things.

He is God and we are not.

He better knows what should happen and when.

Because He is God and can see all things, He sees, knows, and understands infinitely more than we ever can.

He knows exactly what they do and don’t need.

The things we’re asking and telling Him to do might bring our desired end results, but important lessons, opportunities, and blessings could be lost in the process.

Not just for them, but for us and for others in their lives.

So, instead of asking God to make things happen the way I think they should, I step back and look to God to handle things and to bring them about His way, in His timing.

 

This is an important part of faith – trusting God to handle a situation in a way only He could so that all those involved are helped in a way that brings about their good and His glory.

 

The next time you are praying for someone I encourage you to stop and listen to what you are saying.

Are you asking Him to work in their life?

Or, are you asking Him to do what you think needs done so it will turn out the way you think it should?

Which is better?

How can you adjust your prayers so they express faith in the One True God and not in your own ability to problem solve?

 

 

 

Category: Faith, Family, God, Prayer, Trust | LEAVE A COMMENT

Filtering Through Pain

One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is how to filter my pain through truth instead of filtering truth through my pain.

See, as humans when we’re hurting we often let our pain color our perception of things, people, and actions around us.

We don’t do it on purpose.

It’s that the pain is there and present and in the forefront of our minds so we tend to lead with that and to perceive things from that perspective.

Whether we’ve been disrespected, lied to, betrayed, stolen from, or experienced any other kind of pain, we tend to see others’ actions as potential for that event to be happening again, even when it’s not.

We assume (sometimes without realizing it) that because a person from our past did us wrong this person will, too.

Unfortunately, when we’re expecting and looking for something we tend to see it, whether it’s there or not.

 

God calls us to a higher standard than that.

Instead of filtering our life experiences through our pain, He calls us to filter them through His Word and Truth.

Regardless of how we feel or what we have experienced, we have to put the truth of Scripture first and foremost in our minds and operate according to it and what it says.

 

That can be hard.

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Pick Up Your Cross…

Have you ever heard the phrase, “pick up your cross”?

It’s part of a verse where Jesus says, “pick up your cross and follow Me,”.

This is a good, important thing to do.

It’s one of the basic parts of being a Christian.

 

To pick up our cross means to pick up the practice of obeying Christ and whatever calling He has placed on our life, to choose to lay our self aside, and to follow Him wherever He leads us.

 

Have you ever read the entire verse?

It’s found in Matthew 16:24 and says,

 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. (NIV)

 

Did you catch that?

It says to deny yourself.

 

Too often we try to follow Christ while still doing things our own way and living life on our terms.

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What is Salvation?

You’ve probably heard the words Saved or Salvation used by Christians.

What does it mean in this context?

It means saved from our sins.

 

See, back when God first created the world He created a beautiful garden and placed two people in it – Adam and Eve.

They lived a beautiful and blessed life.

There was no sin.

There was no pain.

There was just joy.

Unfortunately, they made a really bad choice that ended all that.

 

When God placed them in the Garden of Eden, He told them about two trees that were there.

One was the Tree of Life; the other was the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

God made it very clear they could eat of any tree in the garden except the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

The enemy came to Eve, disguised as a serpent, to tempt her into eating the fruit of the only tree God had told them to stay away from.

She not only ate it, she shared it with Adam.

When they ate this fruit, their eyes were opened to see the difference between good and evil.

It was at the moment Eve yielded to the serpent’s temptation and ate the fruit that sin entered the world.

Because of this, God made them leave the garden so they would not eat from the Tree of Life.

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Galatians 3:3

In Galatians 3, Paul is explaining to the Christians in Galatia that it’s not about following the law that makes us free.

Some Jewish converts to Christianity in Antioch were telling the Gentile Christians the men had to be circumcised if they wanted to be true Christians. They were trying to make it a condition of salvation.

They were teaching this because under the law of the Old Testament, God told all Jewish men to be circumcised.

Paul was explaining that it was no longer necessary to live according to the law.

Once Christ came the Old Testament law was fulfilled by His life, death, burial, and resurrection. Therefore it no longer applied.

Then Paul brought the point home when he asked the question:

 

Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Galatians 3:3 NIV

 

In other words, you know it’s grace that saves you by having faith in Christ and what He did for you at Calvary. Why are you now trying to use your works and your actions to make it happen?

The truth is we can’t.

Salvation is only given to us by us having faith in Jesus, not by anything else we do.

No matter what we do, we can never be “good enough” to earn our way in to Heaven.

It doesn’t work that way.

 

As I was reading this verse I thought about how we as humans often try to make things happen, not just concerning salvation but also in our lives and the lives of others.

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Petrify

At one point in my life I felt like I was stuck and unable to move.

I couldn’t pray.

I couldn’t understand any of the Scripture I was reading.

 

Then the Lord showed me a word:

Petrify.

To make rigid or inert like stone; to make lifeless or inactive (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

To make someone so frightened they are afraid to move. (Google)

 

That’s when I realized that silent, subtle doubt and fear had snuck into my life and petrified me.

This is what caused me to be stuck – I was paralyzed by fear.

 

I knew the remedy was to replace fear with faith.

I cried out to the Lord in prayer and asked Him to help me to break free and to show me what to do.

A phrase came to my mind.

“Perfect love casts out fear.” .

I remembered this is a verse from 1 John 4:18–

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (NIV)

You can’t have perfect love and fear at the same time.

A few verses earlier in this chapter it tells us that God is love and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. (verse 16)

 

The answer was clear.

I had to choose God and His love over my fear.

Both can’t occupy the same place at the same time.

So I chose love.

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Category: Faith, God, New Testament, Scripture Study | LEAVE A COMMENT

Praying the Psalms

I recently did a bible study that involved reading and praying through the book of Psalms.

As I was doing it, I began to see that virtually every verse in there is either a promise, a praise, or both.

Praying the book of Psalms is a tall order. It took working on it daily for a little over 4 months to get through it.

I didn’t try to rush.

I didn’t try to cover a lot of territory at one time.

I just paid careful attention to the verse I was on and the various parts of it.

 

The study started at chapter one so that’s where I started.

As I read each verse, I prayed it in one of several ways.

I either:

-Prayed it as it was written, which worked for a lot of the praise verses;

-Prayed, “help me not to…”,. whatever the verse was warning against doing;

-Prayed, “help me to….”, whatever the verse was saying we should do or be;

-Prayed, “show me when I act this way so I can correct it…”, whenever the verse was warning against certain unhealthy actions and attitudes

Or,

-Prayed, “help me to remember who You are”, whenever the verse declared His majesty or mentioned any of His traits, grace, or goodness.

 

It really opened my eyes to a lot of things.

I found that the farther along I went, the more aware I became of God’s good will toward us.

I began to feel more open to Him and to His love.

I also began to feel an urge to praise Him, even when I wasn’t reading a Psalm.

The more I read, the more I saw God’s character.

I saw clearly His desire for us as well as the way He wants to protect and bless us.

 

It took a long time to complete but I learned so much and it changed me in so many good ways.

I plan to try to do it at least once a year.

I’m certain the more I do it, the deeper my understanding and love for Him will become.

 

If you’ve never prayed the Psalms I highly recommend it.

If you can’t commit to the whole book then pick a chapter and try it.

There’s so much good stuff in there, you’ll be really glad you did!

 

Let me know if you have other ideas about how to pray the Psalms.

I’d love to try them!

 

 

 

For my post on praying scriptures in general, please see my post, Praying Scriptures

 

 

 

 

Category: Faith, God, Lesson Outline, Prayer, Scripture Study | LEAVE A COMMENT

Why Jesus Was Crucified

There is a passage in the New Testament where the crowds are mocking Jesus while He’s on the cross.

One of the rulers even says to Him, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if He is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.” Luke 23:35 (NIV)

They didn’t believe that Jesus was the Son of God.

 

It is important we understand that Jesus was fully God, as well as fully man, and as such He had the power to prevent the Crucifixion.

 

He could have called down legions of angels to fight for and protect Him.

He could have killed all the people who were against Him.

 

But, He didn’t.

 

Jesus knew He’d come to earth for one reason – to fulfill God’s plan for mankind’s redemption by going to the cross and paying for all sin for all mankind once and for all.

 

Jesus was perfect and had lived a completely sin-free life.

By being crucified, He was paying for all the sins of all mankind.

He was trading His perfect life, which fulfilled all the law of the Old Testament for the redemption of all the sin-filled lives of every person ever born. .

 

He knew many would reject Him.

He knew many would not understand.

 

He also knew many would accept Him and the free pardon of sin He offered.

 

Jesus went through with the crucifixion because He loved all of mankind past, present, and future and He wanted to ransom each and every person ever born.

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Category: Death, Faith, God, Jesus, New Testament | LEAVE A COMMENT

Looking At Judas

Looking at Judas Iscariot I sometimes see myself.

Judas turned his back on Jesus in search of personal gain., choosing to put self and money first.

He even went so far as to betray Jesus by telling the Pharisees where to catch Him so they could arrest Him.

 

I may not try to get Jesus arrested, but every time I turn my attention to the world and it’s shiny objects, making them more important than my faith walk, I betray Him.

Every time I choose to spend time watching t.v. but decide I’m too tired or don’t have time to read my bible, I betray Jesus.

Every time I say I don’t have tithe money but go out to eat or shopping, I steal from Jesus.

Every time I do it my way instead of submitting to His will, I choose self over Jesus.

 

The answer is simple, really

Give Jesus the attention He deserves.

Give Him the first of my time and money, not the leftovers.

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Category: Faith, God, Obedience, People in the Bible, Submission | LEAVE A COMMENT