Our Father in heaven, Your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.    Matthew 6:9-10 HCSB

I Surrender All is a hymn that was written by Judson W. Van DeVenter. It was put to music by Winfield S. Weeden and published in 1896.  Van Deventer said this was his inspiration for the hymn: “For some time, I had struggled between developing my talents in the field of art and going into full-time evangelistic work. At last the pivotal hour of my life came, and I surrendered all. A new day was ushered into my life. I became an evangelist and discovered down deep in my soul a talent hitherto unknown to me. God had hidden a song in my heart, and touching a tender chord, He caused me to sing.” 

The lyrics say, “All to Jesus I surrender, All to Thee I freely give, I will ever love and trust Him, in His daily presence live.”

Have you surrendered all?

Our scripture passage today comes from the model prayer that Jesus used to teach His disciples how to pray. It begins with honoring God the Father as holy. He is set apart. He is God. He is above all things. A triune of one Godhead and three persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Verse 10 speaks of God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. When we pray, we should pray in accordance with God’s will. It’s not so easy to do that unless you have surrendered to Him.

These first two verses of the model prayer paints a word picture of what total surrender should look like. It should begin with us honoring God as Holy. Then it talks about wanting His will to be done above our own. When we surrender all, our will lines up with His will.

It’s tempting to pull Scripture out of context and allow ourselves to believe that if we love the Lord and try our best to do well that He will give us whatever we ask for. For example, 1 John 5:14-15 says, “Now this is the confidence we have before Him: Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears whatever we ask, we know that we have what we have asked Him for.”

It would be easy to read verse 15 and think that whatever we ask for we will have. But you must carefully read verse 14 which says “Whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”

When we surrender all to Him we ask that His will be done and not ours. In Luke 22:42, Jesus prayed that God would remove the cup from Him. He was asking that He not have to be crucified. But, He said “Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”  Now I can’t imagine anything worse than knowing that you are about to be falsely accused, arrested, tortured and murdered. Of course, Jesus would have preferred to not have to go through that, but He had surrendered all to God’s will.

I considered this a little scary at first. I mean the thought of leaving everything up to God made me a little nervous. But, looking back, I don’t know what I was thinking. Was I honestly thinking that I could do a better job of managing my life than my Creator? I had spent many years proving this to be false. I knew I had not done such a good job of managing my life on my own.

Surrendering all to Him was the best decision I ever made. If you have not surrendered your all to Him, I strongly encourage you to do so. When we give it all over to God, the good, the bad and the ugly, we let go. We can trust Him to work all things out for our good when we love Him and are called according to His purpose (Romans 8:28). When we surrender our all to Him, it shows that we trust Him to work it all out for our benefit. It shows that we trust Him to take good care of us.

Please know that God does not want a half-hearted surrender anymore than He wants half-hearted obedience. Jesus told us in Matthew 22:37 to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our minds. God wants us to surrender all to Him and trust Him with it. Are you willing to do that today?

If you can just let go and let God, you will be so glad you did. Turn to Him today. Give it all over to Him. Surrender all to Him. Give it all freely and live in His presence daily. Don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.

Have a great day!