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

A Woman Died

A woman I know died this week.

Though she was a few years younger than me, she looked my mother’s age.

 

She used to come into the food pantry I served.

I’d tried talking to her a time or two – but she didn’t seem to want to interact.

 

I saw the signs – haunted, darting eyes, gaunt face.

I recognized the smell on her clothes and the sores on her face.

 

She was a meth addict.

 

She was also someone’s mother; someone’s daughter.

 

She was caught up in a hell of her own making.

 

For whatever reason, she never broke free.

 

Now, she’s dead – a victim of her own bad choices.

 

As much as I hated her bad habit, I can’t point a finger.

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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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On Being Vulnerable

I recently wrote a post on how I like to journal (read it here).

In the post I mentioned being vulnerable before God.

 

Sometimes, we try to hold back and not talk to God about certain things.

Things we’re ashamed of, embarrassed by, hurt from.

 

Here’s the thing. – God already knows about it!

 

Because God is all seeing and all knowing (omniscient), He knows absolutely everything about everyone and everything already.

There are no thoughts we can think that He doesn’t hear.

There is nothing we can do He doesn’t see.

 

So, when we try to hold things back from Him we are only fooling ourselves.

Not only that, all these things we keep holding back from Him are the very things He wants us to bring to Him.

 

Bringing ourselves before the Lord and laying our hearts open can be scary.

We’re afraid He will be shocked – He won’t. There’s nothing He hasn’t seen.

We’re afraid He will reject us because we are so “bad”. He won’t. He loves us unconditionally, no matter what!

 

Sometimes, part of the problem is, sometimes we don’t want to have to face what we’ve done.

We’d rather turn a blind eye to it, bury it deep within ourselves, and move one.

The problem with that is that not only is it still there, but God sees it and wants us to bring it out and share it with Him.

We might be able to bury it temporarily, but He’ll keep reminding us of it.

The sooner we bring it to Him and face it, the sooner we can get rid of it and stop it from hanging over our head.

The consequences may still be there, but He will walk us through it and comfort us as we go.

 

Another part might be that we don’t realize or we’ve forgotten that He is our Father

As a parent, He wants us to bring our broken things to Him so He can fix them – broken relationships, broken habits, broken thoughts, broken lives.

 

When we are brave enough to go to Him with these things, even if we can only do it one tiny bit at a time, He will begin to heal and restore us.

As He does, we will begin to see and feel His comfort, which will help us to trust Him more.

As we trust Him more, we can bring the bigger things to Him as we open our hearts to Him more.

It’s this heart opening that we do that allows us to be vulnerable with Him.

 

It won’t always be easy.

Sometimes there will be substantial pain.

But, at the end of the day we will be closer to God, relying more and more on His love and mercy, trusting Him and His love more and more.

That’s a pretty good place to be!

 

If there is something you are hiding or holding back from the Lord, I hope you will bring it to Him and ask Him to help and to heal you in that area.

It may be hard, but the peace, relief, and healing you receive will be so worth it!

 

 

He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. Psalm 147:3 (NIV)

 

So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10 (NIV)

 

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV)

 

To read my previous post on journaling,, please click here.

 

 

 

 

Category: God, Journaling, Trust | LEAVE A COMMENT

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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Lamenting Before the Lord

Sometimes I get really frustrated or annoyed about something and will sit on my friend’s porch and talk about it.

I will whine, cry, question the circumstance, and list out all that is bothering me.

By the end of the conversation we are both saying, “But God can help. He can intervene.”

 

This is more than griping, complaining, or whining.

It’s lamenting.

 

Lament – to express deep regret, grief, anger or sorrow. It is followed by moving to an expression of trust.

 

The Bible is filled with these types of things.

My favorite is Psalm 13.

David has had all these bad things happening; things he’s concerned and worried about.

 

He writes about them specifically in the first 4 verses when he is asking God how long he (David) must suffer in all these areas.

Then in verse 5 he tells God, “But I trust in Your unfailing love…”.

He wraps up the Psalm by declaring he will sing God’s praise –

He will praise God because God has been good to him.

 

Instead of focusing on his problems he chooses to look to God and His unfailing love,

In other words, David is saying he has all these problems but is choosing to look to the Lord and to trust Him.,

Not so God will fix them.

Not so God will answer his prayers, but because David recognizes who God is and what He’s done for him.

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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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Prayer Language

One of the struggles I’ve had with praying is feeling comfortable with what I’m saying.

When I was a child I was taught to pray by my grandmother.

Because she read the King James Bible (KJV), she used that grammar and vocabulary when she prayed.

Not that there is anything wrong with that version of the Bible.

There isn’t.

It’s just that it’s a very old version and was written in Old English and some of our words and ways of saying things have changed.

For example, instead of you, the KJV says thou.

Instead of brothers it says brethren.

Still the same message, just different vocabulary.

 

As I grew up, I tended to pray the way my grandmother did.

It felt stiff, bulky, and awkward.

In short, it felt fake.

 

I thought that was how you were supposed to pray and that because it made no sense to me I must not be doing it right.

I knew prayer was supposed to be respectful and reverent, but I thought I had to speak God’s language to be heard.

So, after awhile I just stopped praying.

 

Then, one day I found this verse:

Trust in Him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge. Psalm 62:8

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The Idolatry of Prayer

One thing Christians say and hear a lot is that when things are going on or we are dealing with situations, we should just pray about it.

Praying is a very important part of our faith walk.

 

There’s just one question, though::

What is our motive for praying?

Really deep down, why are we praying?

 

Is it:

Because we’re supposed to?

Because we know God will probably help?

Because we have something we want God to do?

Because we want God to intervene in a situation and cause it to turn out the way we think it should?

 

Or, is it because we know God is our only hope and that He is the only one who can handle the situation so that it turns out the way it should?

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