Surrender

1. All to Jesus I surrender;
   All to Him I freely give;
   I will ever love and trust Him,
   In His presence daily live.
   
   • Refrain:
     I surrender all,
     I surrender all;
     All to Thee, my blessed Savior,
     I surrender all.
2. All to Jesus I surrender;
   Humbly at His feet I bow,
   Worldly pleasures all forsaken;
   Take me, Jesus, take me now.
3. All to Jesus I surrender;
   Make me, Savior, wholly Thine;
   Let me feel the Holy Spirit,
   Truly know that Thou art mine.
4. All to Jesus I surrender;
   Lord, I give myself to Thee;
   Fill me with Thy love and power;
   Let Thy blessing fall on me.
5. All to Jesus I surrender;
   Now I feel the sacred flame.
   Oh, the joy of full salvation!
   Glory, glory, to His Name!

--Judson W. VanDeVenter, "I Surrender All", 1896


Recently, I was horrified to discover that I've been harboring a cache of resentment and unforgiveness in my soul.  It's far more extensive than I imagined, and it's been festering and affecting my daily thoughts more than I realized for the past year or so.  Not an easy thing to admit.  And in all my fallen nature, I've been clutching and protecting it like Gollum and his Precious. 

I went to the prayer chapel here at OMS earlier this afternoon to pray for a bit, and found myself asking God for help to let this bitterness go. I was perplexed to find Him silent.  I had repented for being so unforgiving for so long, and knew I would have to change my thought patterns and let the resentment go.  "Lord, help me with this colossal effort of disciplining my mind to focus on whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy." Still nothing. 

Then it suddenly hit me that it had nothing to do with acts of the will or monumental efforts. It had everything to do with total surrender to Jesus. I couldn't believe it, but I was still trying to maintain control and think I could solve my problem on my own. I realized I need to ask Jesus not only what He wants me to do each day, but what He wants me to think each day. I realized that instead of trying to whip my mind into submission, I need to hand my thoughts over to the Lord in submission.

So I gave up. I told Jesus I wanted to surrender my thoughts to Him, and asked Him to fill me with joy instead of resentment. I asked Him to help me constantly focus on the Spirit every minute of every day. Then the words to the hymn "I Surrender All" came to my mind.  I quietly sang out the refrain a couple of times, and then said Amen. 

When I stood up and looked around, I realized that I used to have a knot in my stomach, but it was gone. I actually never noticed it was there until today when it disappeared. I started thinking about forgiveness and why God makes such a big deal out of it in the Bible. It's because when we go around clutching our little parcels of resentment and hurt, it's bad for us. God makes rules because He knows better than we do what's good for us. When we substitute our judgment for His, we make a deadly mistake.