I Surrender
Last week we introduced the song “I Surrender” which is on the latest live album from Hillsong titled Cornerstone. Originally, the Worship Community was not planning on introducing this song at this time, but over the last few weeks of 2012 several things seemed to indicate this should be the next song. After hearing Phil’s sermon on Sunday and how well if fit with the themes of the song, it was obvious that God was working things out and guiding us to introduce “I Surrender” at the start of the year.
The song pairs two themes throughout; surrendering all of ourselves to God and desperation for more of Him. The first theme is one that our sinful nature fights against, yet is at the very heart of worship. Paul tells us that true worship is giving or offering ourselves as a sacrifice to God, not just singing songs in church (Romans 12:1 NIV). Giving all of ourselves to God is not easy though. Besides all the negative thoughts that we associate with the word, “surrender,” the main difficulty in surrendering to God is that we don’t like to be completely dependent and completely trust anyone other than ourselves. We like to feel like we are in control of our lives, and the idea of denying ourselves or losing our life is not very appealing. However, Jesus tells us in Matt 16:24-25 that the way to truly find life is to lay ours down for Him. It takes trust to lay down our lives, trust that Jesus loves us knows what is best for us better than we do. It’s not something that is always easy. It isn’t a one time thing. Surrendering to God is something we need to do daily (Luke 9:23).
The second theme of the song flows from the theme of surrendering to God. When we purposely live dependently on God it puts us in a place where we realize how much we need Him. We see our need to know Him more and for Him to speak to us. As Phil mentioned Sunday, the church is strongest when it is most desperate for God. We become weak when we start relying on our own skills and own strength instead of depending on God.
Our prayer as the Worship Community is that, as we sing this song, we will grow to know God more, trust Him more, and give more of ourselves to Him in all we do. You can use the media player to listen and get familiar with the song. You can also click the WorshipTogether link to view all the lyrics or the link to buy the song from Amazon.