Tuesday, July 7, 2009

I Give Up

To some of you the following prayer, first written by Betty Stam, will be familiar. Oh, how I want this to be the sincere prayer of my heart in every moment. To me, praying this prayer is like the singing of the old hymn, I Surrender All; even as the words come across my lips, though I want to, I know I'm not there yet. I must remind myself daily, minute by minute, Who I'm living for...because I keep forgetting. Right at this moment, this may be the prayer of my heart, and five minutes from now I will catch myself trying to take back control and will need to release it to Him again.

I'm so thankful the Lord is patient.



Lord, I give up all my own purposes and plans,
all my own desires and hopes and ambitions,
and accept Thy will for my life.

I give myself, my life, my all utterly to Thee,
to be Thine forever.

I hand over to Thy keeping all my friendships,
all the people whom I love are to take second place in my heart.

Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit.
Work out Thy whole will in my life,
at any cost, now and forever.

To me, to live is Christ.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Katie ~ Thank you for sharing this prayer. It is also how I want to live daily, yet I too often struggle with my own selfishness and then need to be reminded it's not about me but about Him. How thankful I am that Jesus is faithful to complete the work began in us!

JanAl said...

"at any cost", is humanly the most difficult to honestly repeat, I think that I held my breath when I got to that part, but the times in my life that have been the most difficult, are the times when God was most visible, and also where most of my growth came from, Praise God.