I Surrender All

As I did my studies this week, I couldn’t help but think about the song “I Surrender All” and how this is the very key to us having a deep personal relationship with God. The song says: All to Jesus, I surrender. All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live.
Notice how the song starts off: “All to Jesus I surrender, all to Him I freely give.” We are to surrender everything to God, our possessions, our loved ones, and everything that consumes our life. We are to make sure that the “things” in our lives don’t replace God and that God is Lord of our life.

Then notice the song continues: “I will ever love and trust Him, in His presence daily live.” Daily living in God’s presence, placing full trust in Him. When we talk about pursuing an intimate relationship with God, we are talking about tearing down all the barriers in our lives, having no secrets, fully surrendered to Him. He knows our hearts and so even though we think we are hiding something, we aren’t. He knows everything. And when we are not close to Him, he grieves. He wants to have that place in our hearts and in our lives where we enjoy His presence. We must say, and mean it, “Lord, remove the veil that prevents me from entering into your presence. Take my self-love, my flesh, and remove it.” John 3:30 says: “He must increase, but I must decrease."

We need to make sure that we have surrendered all to God, that we don’t leave any roots of the “things” in our lives to take the place of God. What happens when we leave roots – they grow back, don’t they? We need to ask God to help us pluck them out. We need to ask God to help remove the self-hyphenated sins in our lives.

To be specific, the self-sins are:
- self-righteousness,
- self-pity,
- self-confidence,
- self-sufficiency,
- self-admiration,
- self-love
- and a host of others like them