All to Jesus I Surrender!
Be Strong, Be Well — Sunday, January 31, 2021
Judson W. Van de Venter (1855-1939) wrote some powerful lyrics for a song we sing so often, All to Jesus I Surrender. Read them carefully.
All to Jesus I surrender,
all to Him, I freely give, I will ever love and trust Him,
in His presence daily live.
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,
Lord, I give myself to Thee; Fill me with Thy love and power,
let Thy blessing fall on me.
I surrender all, I surrender all,
all to Thee, my blessed Savior,
I surrender all.
Surrender means to relinquish possession or control of (something) to another because of demand or compulsion: to give up in favor of another, especially voluntarily.
Hands down, surrendering everything to Christ is one of the most challenging things we will ever do. It is the one thing we will fail to do more frequently than anything else in our Christian life.
God asks every one of us to recognize His sovereign rule and surrender our will to His. This submission is accomplished when we voluntarily submit to His Son, Jesus Christ. Those who believe and obey the call to surrender, give their allegiance to the Savior, and vow to do whatever He asks of us.
“I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live...Worldly pleasures all forsaken; take me, Jesus, take me now.”
Just reading these words brings some deep and disturbing thoughts to my mind. Maybe you’re like me (or maybe not), but I have a difficult time thinking of how I have frequently failed to surrender everything, every day, to my Lord. I try. I try diligently to do the very best I can. But I still come up short.
Was this what Paul was talking about in Philippians 3:12-14? “Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
We will never reach the height of moral perfection as long as we are in this body. But we must make the effort to strenuously press on for the prize found in Christ Jesus. The Greek is defined as: to press on: figuratively of one who in a race runs swiftly to reach the goal.
This prize is continual forgiveness and the goal of heaven in the end. This is conditional, “if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). We know we fail and sin. To say otherwise, makes us and God a liar (vs. 8, 10). The key is verse 9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Don’t give up. Continue pressing on. Never stop singing and believing...
“All to Jesus I surrender,
Lord, I give myself to Thee; Fill me with Thy love and power,
let Thy blessing fall on me.” —Chris