Wrap yourself round with possessions and entertainment. The alternative to self-denial is self-protection the alternative to losing your life for Jesus’s sake is to save your life for your own sake. Why would anyone exchange comfort and security for a life of self-denial and cross-bearing? Jesus tells us why: “For whoever would save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24). But after giving the call, he moves on to the warning. If Jesus ended his invitation to follow him here, we might well wonder if self-denial is worth it. It will mean persistently dying to every thought, affection, ambition, or desire that resists Christ’s kingdom. It will mean ruthlessly forsaking the “self” that stands in rebellion against God. Jesus wants us to know exactly what following him will mean. Yet here, at the entrance of the Christian life, Jesus gives those two blunt commands: “deny yourself” and “take up your cross.” And not only once, but “daily.”
I SURRENDER ALL CHORDS SKIN
And “take up your cross”? To his hearers, the cross would not yet have evoked ideas of love and self-sacrifice - only of pierced skin and streaming blood, of horror, guilt, and humiliation. “Deny yourself” would have sounded as threatening to them as it does to us. But Jesus, in one of the most famous passages in the Gospels, goes to war with this ancient falsehood with a call, a warning, and a promise.Īs Jesus made his way to Jerusalem, he turned toward his disciples with a call that cuts us to the core: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Obedience will make you miserable. That lie is as old as the garden of Eden, as powerful as Satan himself. The lie, the deception, is that if you give yourself up wholly to God for him to do whatever he pleases to make you holy, God-glorifying, and fruitful, you will be joyless, miserable. Naturally, we find ourselves in the grip of what John Piper calls “the number-one lie of the universe”: The trouble is that no one naturally believes that self-denial leads to joy. And not only in one climactic act of surrender, but every single day. If we want the kind of joy that is “inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8), then we must give what we call “ourselves” wholly to Jesus. The deepest joys in this world - the most durable delights, the sweetest pleasures - come only on the other side of self-denial. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. (Luke 9:23–24) His tombstone is inscribed with the title of this hymn, "I Surrender All".If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. Weeden, born in Ohio in 1847, taught in singing schools prior to becoming an evangelist and was a noted song leader and vocalist. "I Surrender All" was put to music by Weeden, and first published in 1896 in Gospel Songs of Grace and Glory, a collection of old and new hymns by various hymnists, compiled by Weeden, Van DeVenter, and Leonard Weaver, and published by Sebring Publishing Co.
Van DeVenter published more than 60 hymns in his lifetime, but " I Surrender All" is his most famous. After his retirement, he remained involved in speaking and in religious gatherings. Weeden, his associate and singer, assisted him for many years. Toward the end of his life, Van DeVenter moved to Florida and was a professor of hymnology at the Florida Bible Institute for four years in the 1920s. Van DeVenter wavered for five years between becoming a recognized artist or devoting himself to ministry. Finally, he surrendered his life to Christian service and wrote the text of the hymn while conducting a meeting at the Ohio home of noted evangelist George Sebringįollowing his decision to surrender his life to the Divine, Van DeVenter traveled throughout the United States, England, and Scotland, doing evangelistic work. Recognizing his talent for the ministry, friends urged him to give up teaching and become an evangelist. Following graduation from Hillsdale College, he became an art teacher and supervisor of art in the public schools of Sharon, Pennsylvania. He was, in addition, an accomplished musician, singer, and composer. Van DeVenter was also an active layman in his Methodist Episcopal Church, involved in the church's evangelistic meetings. Judson Van DeVenter was born on a farm in Michigan in 1855.
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