The old hymn says…
“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.”
If we sing this song just the way it’s written, we should be in complete surrender. But are we? If not, we are lying as we sing it. The hymn says, “I surrender ALL.” If we cannot sing the hymn with complete honesty, in complete surrender, than we should change the words to read, “I’ll surrender a little bit.” or “I’ll surrender some.” Or, perhaps we should just refrain from singing this hymn at all.
When God asks for us to bring our tithes (10%) to the storehouse, that’s what He’s asking for….a 10% return of what is His gift to us. In obedience we should give that back to Him without a thought. That act of obedience should not feel like a sacrifice. After all, everything that is in our possession was His first. As Christians it should still be His, but in our hands for use for Him. That is what stewardship is about…the good use for God’s glory of the things with which He has blessed us.
I’ve heard people say that it was fine during Old Testament times to take a tenth and give it to God, but that we could never survive in these economies if we did that. After all, don’t many us live from paycheck to paycheck, having great expenses to pay each month? Everything that we have was placed in our hands by Him. Without Him, no matter what we do, no matter how hard we work, we’d have nothing. He wants to see our obedience to Him.
Do we obey Him and give what He asks? We need to, not because someone told us to, or guilted us into it, or because we will be blessed in some way for our obedience. We need to because our love of God should be great enough that we want to. Do we know how much we owe to God for His gift to us? Do we give our tithes to Him, and then do we give more, out of our love for Him? Or do we have an attitude of “I worked for this. It’s mine?”
If that is our attitude, and we stand at the altar, with our hands clenched around our wallet, with hearts hardened and unwilling to obey, how will God see us? How will He measure us against His giving? How dare we stand before the cross, seeing Him with His arms outstretched farther than is humanly possible, seeing Him, willingly, placing His ALL on that sacrificial tree for us. His blood fell, His heart broke, because of us. He could have stopped the entire thing, but because He loved us, He gave up His whole life, 100% of it.
What God asks of us can hardly compare with what he himself gave. The scriptures tell us that the Lord loves a cheerful giver. Knowing this, how can we deny Him? How can we selfishly hold on to what he deserves?
How can we sing, “I Surrender All , all to Him I freely give, unless we do just that?
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