I Surrender All

Today, at church, the theme was surrender. The songs we sang pointed to that, and the pastor's sermon was about surrendering. Being the word nut that I am, I looked up surrender, to fully understand its meaning.

surrender- v.- to deliver up, or yield to the possession of power of another, on demand or under duress; to give oneself up to some influence, course, emotion; to give up, abandon, or relinquish; to yield, or resign in favor of another.

Any one can be applied to our relationship with the Lord, and we can surrender either when He asks us to or, under duress. If you look at the root word, render, you can see where the duress would come into play. A friend, after they butchered their pig, decided to render the fat of the pig so she could use it in her cooking. The rendering was a slow process. All the fat scraps were placed in a pan, put in the oven on a low temperature,for hours, so that all the impurities could be skimmed off to create a pure product.

Sometimes we have to go through a rendering process when we refuse to let go of certain things in our lives. The heat is applied so that the impurities can be removed to make us pure and usable. Much like the metal smith who melts gold , carefully skimming off the impurities till he can see his own image in the gold in order to form it into a beautiful piece of jewelry. I want Christ to see Him in me, I want to be usable, how that takes place is up to me.

Paul, in the book of Philippians, recounts his own personal kudos to the people only to tell them those things are rubbish compared to the 'surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord'. He gave up title and position, things important in the worlds eyes, and counted it all as loss. He gave up, he surrendered, he left his heart to be filled with the things of Christ.

In doing a bit of Lenten reading, I came across a prayer, and part of it said this, "I need you. I am making space for you in my life today; Lord, meet me in the empty places I have made. Lord, draw near to me, and fill me until I overflow." As we sang the old hymn, ' I surrender all', today, each time after that phrase, I said, 'Help me Lord'. Giving up things we see as important, that give us comfort and significance, is a hard thing to do. But I think I would rather surrender when the Lord asks me than to do it under duress.

All to Jesus, I surrender, Lord, I give my heart to Thee.