Conditional Surrender

"All to Jesus I surrender.  All to Him I freely give.  I will ever love and trust Him.  In His presence daily live.  I surrender all.  I surrender all.  All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all."

Think about those words for a minute.  Let them sink in.

If you're anything like me, you may have been singing this song longer than you can even remember--sometimes you may find that you sing it because you know it or because it's being sung in your church service, but you may not let the words really take full meaning.

Also, if you're like me, you may have had specific times in your life when you were really, truly, deeply singing those words, whether in church, at home, at youth camp, in a hospital, anywhere, and you may have REALLY meant that you were surrendering your all to Jesus.

But do we ever follow through with the ALL part of the equation? I know I don't.  Or I may think I do and then find that I don't.  Often, I find that when the song affects me, I am thinking about one particular situation in my life.  And in that moment, I truly mean I am surrendering that portion of my life to God.

What I find happen in my situation more often than not, though, is that I essentially modify the title of the hymn.  I change it to "I Surrender All IF...."  Feel free to disagree with me if you think I'm off-base here, but I personally think this is probably a more common phenomenon than any of us *want* to admit.  Some examples of the conditional statement:

"I surrender all IF You promise to heal me from these physical health issues I am having."
"I surrender all IF you make recovery easy for me; I don't want to be uncomfortable so I will surrender it to You if You make my mind decide to like my body and if You make my anxiety go away."
"I surrender all IF you tell me I am going to get a job in the next few days."
"I surrender all IF you let my relative who is so near and dear to me live instead of die."

Any of those hit home to you?  If not, don't worry, those are just 4 examples, there are innumerable others out there.

The hardest thing about the Christian faith is that we can't live with this premise of conditional surrender.  If we have faith--true Hebrews 11:1 "confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we cannot see" faith--then we MUST exercise UNconditional surrender.

Do I think we don't mean the song when we see it? Absolutely not.  I believe that if the song affects you in the innermost part of your being, Jesus is working on your heart ("He's still working on me, to make me what I need to be....").  This means that He is calling you to surrender ALL to Him.  Not just the things that are EASY to surrender, but ALL.  Everything.  Anything you have struggled with, are struggling with, or will struggle with in the future.

The hard part of being human is that surrender is a choice we are called to make each morning before we start our day, as well as however many times throughout the day we need His help to make it through.  It's not easy.  Let me repeat, it's NOT easy.  And God KNOWS we won't always be able to surrender every single struggle in our lives every single time a thought related to the struggles come into our head, and this is because we are human.  We are not, however, exempt from the call to surrender.  We are expected to surrender because of the sacrifice Christ made for us on the cross.

If you feel like things are out of control in your life and you feel powerless to take hold of them and fix them--don't worry--that's because you are powerless to fix them.  We are ALL powerless to fix our own situations.  The power we get comes from Christ, and Christ alone.  Which again boils down to today's key word: surrender.

Have you surrendered? Are you surrendering? Do you wish you could surrender but you don't feel like you can?  Have you surrendered in the past and things didn't quite go the way you planned?  Good news--surrendering to God ALWAYS works for the best.  Always.  But that again comes down to faith and trusting God's time table and not our own.  Which is a discussion that can easily take up ten blog posts in and of itself so that's all the mention I'll make of it right now.

The next time you hear this beautiful hymn--whether it's your first time hearing it or your 500th time hearing it--think about those words and thing about surrendering your all to the One who made you.

And for one of my current favorite renditions of the song:

Broken People

Good Friday, everyone!

I'm going to get right into this post, so if you don't want to read something that is intended to be deep but might just end up rambling.  But it's Good Friday, so it may be something to inspire introspection.

So today's topic as designated in the title: Broken people.

How many of you have ever felt like a broken person?  If you are honest with yourself you probably hear your mind screaming at you, "Me! I've felt broken! I'm broken right now! I was broken last week! I have been broken for longer than I can remember!" but most of us leave that inner monologue where it takes place--in our minds--and don't share the burden with others.

The past few months have been rough for me.  Heck, in some ways, the past decade has been one heckuva roller coaster.  Outside of the typical issues (Including but not limited to my eating disorder, OCD, severe anxiety, and juvenile idiopathic arthritis) I've had an onslaught of symptoms that have led to a myriad of doctors and traveling and medical mysteriousness.

During these past few months, several times my gut reaction has been to get angry or frustrated or start screaming and crying and asking God, "Why me? Why do you let this happen to me? WHY? WHY?"  But the past three or four weeks, once I was able to physically get back to church, I have come to a new level of  reflection and appreciation and humbleness for Jesus' death and resurrection and exactly how it relates to our human struggles.

When you look at Isaiah, chapter 52, where the prophet predicts the crucifixion and resurrection of the Son of God, and when you see verse 14, you will find that it says:

Just as there were many who were appalled at him—his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being and his form marred beyond human likeness (NIV)

Just take a minute to let that sink in.  This was how Jesus, the Son of God, our Lord and Savior, spent the hours leading up to His crucifixion.  He was broken beyond human likeness.  Another translation says he was marred beyond recognition.  His body was so broken--so much that we can't even begin to comprehend it with our human minds.  And then think of the significance of the Last Supper--Jesus breaking the Bread of Life--His body.  This isn't just a regular little analogy that someone comes up with when writing a book or story or poem.  Jesus, KNOWING THAT HE WOULD BE BROKEN, symbolized the very breaking that happened to Him, by breaking the symbolic bread and handing it to His disciples, signifying the sacrifice He was making for humanity--a sacrifice none of us deserved.

When I think about how broken our Savior was; when I stop to consider how little pain I am experiencing compared to the beating and suffering and death, "even death on a cross", he WILLINGLY took to save me--to save us--I can't justify complaining about any physical maladies or medical mysteries I may be facing.

Does this mean that I never complain? Absolutely not! Does this mean that I fully understand God's plan and timing and reason for allowing me to go through all of this? Definitely not.  I do get frustrated.  I do cry.  I do complain.  However, I've found that if I truly take my attention and focus it on the cross--the symbol of our Savior's devotion to the world and to saving the world and to being the sacrifice for our sins so we may have eternal life in heaven--my battles, even though they are significantly strong to me and hard to fight, pale in comparison to the pain, suffering, and marring beyond recognition Christ endured on the cross.

My human mind feels abandoned sometimes, but that's because I'm human and only have the mind of a human.  My human mind also yearns for things to happen when I want them to happen.  But I have to remind myself that my life isn't in my hands--it's in God's hands--and while it's frustrating, I recognize and acknowledge and hold true to the fact that I'm living on God's time, and the time that I am here on earth is only borrowed until the day I see my Savior face to face in paradise.  

I'd love to leave you with a song full of hope and affirmation.  We are not worthy, but Jesus thinks we are people worth dying for.

If we keep our eyes and minds and heart set on Jesus and the sacrifice he made for us, to SAVE us, we may indeed find the strength to leave our fears and worries and stressors and battles at the cross.

(photo credit: http://lisanotes.blogspot.com/2012/02/lay-it-down.html)