Prayer of Surrender

All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live.

All to Jesus I surrender, Make me, Savior, wholly Thine; Let me feel the Holy Spirit, Truly know that Thou art mine.

All to Jesus I surrender, Lord, I give myself to Thee; Fill me with Thy love and power, Let Thy blessing fall on me.

I surrender all, I surrender all; All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.

Precious Lord Jesus, here we are at the end of yet another year. A year filled with chaos and distractions. A year filled with pain and grief. A year filled with trials and tribulations. A year as jam-packed with endless activity as any I have ever known.

It sometimes seems that along the way, even my best of intentions has given way to the exhaustion of life. Somewhere along the way I became distracted by the many things clamoring for my attention. Somewhere along the way, I lost sight of you and began to focus on the temporal instead of the eternal.

Today, as we sit on the cusp of a brand-new year and the fresh beginnings 2018 offers us, we simply stop. We rest. We pause to remember who you are, what you’ve done. We come to you with our arms outstretched longing to have you, to let you have all of us.

We come to you waving the white flag of surrender.

We surrender our hearts. We surrender our wills We surrender our emotions. We surrender every aspect of our lives.

Lord, we are nothing without you. It is only your power, your Spirit, at work in us that gives us the strength, the courage, to face this world in which we live. We long for more of you, to have you inhabit every piece of our hearts. We long to live lives marked by your glory, your power.

And we know it’s only by emptying ourselves of ourselves that we can make room for you.

He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less. John 3:30

Our prayer today is that you would become greater and greater in our lives, that we would become less and less. We pray that we would be able to decrease so you may increase. We pray that our egos, our pride, would be poured out, emptied, so we might humble ourselves before you. We pray for total and complete surrender.

My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:20

These lives you have given us are not our own; they are yours. Help us put our lives on the cross, crucify them with Christ. May every word we say be your word. May every breath we take be your breath. May every move we make be your move.

We don’t want to live these lives you have given us; we want you to live through us. To parent through us. To love through us. To serve through us. To work through us. Whatever we do, may it be you through us so we might bring glory to you, pointing the world back to you.

As we look to the new year that is quickly approaching, we enter a new beginning with hearts fully surrendered to you, hearts longing to fully know you. May we live our lives emptied so that we may be completely filled with your Spirit.

All to Jesus we surrender, all to you we freely give. May we ever love and trust you, in your presence daily live.

We surrender all. We surrender all. All to you, our precious Jesus, we surrender all.

In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.