I Surrender All

There was a song we sang in church : I Surrender All
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, Make me Savior, wholly Thine -- May Thy Holy Spirit fill me, May I know thy power divine.
I surrender All ! I surrender All! All to Thee my blessed Savior, I surrender all.
It has taken on new meaning to me lately. --- The very thought of surrendering is something I have understood in different ways -- I remember there was a time I thought of surrender as going against my own will to give up something I wanted to hold onto. Surrender or else...but I would not
Then I think there was a time when surrender just happened to me. Like I couldn't do anything else BUT surrender -- "When you aint got nothing, you got nothing to lose..." You might as well surrender... but I could not always give in -- especially when I got a glimmer of control back.

Lately, I am beginning to see that surrender is the leaning back, the trusting act, the giving in the way you might give into an ocean wave -- and let it carry you along.
I am surprised when people want to fight that Spirit that carries them along instead of letting it happen...believing that the Spirit is malevolent, perhaps -- or careless or absent? I am surprised that we creatures on earth are so certain that we know better than the Creator Himself where and how we should be. We are so in love with the idea that we can control the outcome -- God seems to give us the room to make mistake after mistake until we finally get to the point where we relax, and give in and surrender at last to His perfect plan.

You would think people in jail would be able to surrender more easily than those on the outside, but what I see is that people will do ANYTHING to keep a MODICUM of control in their hands. It is almost more difficult -- after you have given up almost everything to give that last little bit.

A woman I am working with was found making "hooch" in her jail cell from fermented fruit.
She explained that she just needed that one thing under her control -- never mind that it was the very thing that was slowly killing her soul, ruining her life, making her children spend Christmas with strangers.

God give us the ability to trust that You are good, that You are love us more than we love ourselves, and that if we give it all up to You -- things beyond our wildest imagininations -- more than we could ask for or think of will be given to us.