Soul Surrender

Soul Surrender

Help me then, in every tribulation,

So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,

That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,

Offered me within Thy holy Word.

Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,

E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,

One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,

Till with Christ the Lord I stand.

Source: http://www.hymnal.net/hymn.php/h/713#ixzz2Iu8vIier

            Scottish singer Annie Lennox, in a song called 'Cold', 1992, said, "Dying is easy its living that scares me to death."

            This writer said to his cardiologist recently, "I don't mind being a martyr if the dying could be quick." What is it in the human psyche that causes a person to keep on keeping on after harsh illness, disability, the destruction of your home by storm or fire...even the loss of your companion, family member, or other physical or political assets which you had considered so important?

            In one of movie actor Jack Lemmon's most famous quotes, an official in the garment industry in New York, facing death, "I just want another season."

            This world traveler, traveling through India, sharing a compartment in a train with an Indian government official, he said, "Is this your first trip to India?" I said, "No I have been here several times and each time I feel like I am in the movie 'Gandhi'". The government official said, "You're right. Nothing changes. We have such a large population because each set of parents hope that one child will take care for them in old age."

            No matter where you are in the world, which large city, no matter where you are in America, in a city or town of any size, you see fathers, and now many mothers, scurrying-rushing to get home after a days work. No matter what heathenism the liberals of the world try to visit upon you, same sex marriage, etc., as long as there are heterosexual-loving parents, who have produced children with their DNA, there is still hope-love left for mankind....generation seasons, the "normal" development of mankind. "And all Judah stood before the LORD, with their little ones, their wives, and their children" (2 Chronicles 20:13).

            Basic Christianity, believers who know the sovereignty of God and his book will never surrender their soul to Satan and his minions, powers of the air, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]" (Eph 6:12).

            On one of my many trips to Africa, on a gorilla photography safari in Rwanda, a pygmy mother, stomach large expecting another child, carrying one baby in her arms, other younger children around her, I said to her, "You are a good mother." Now, she probably did not need all those children. She and the father who was one of the pygmy's assisting me in the gorilla hunt, probably had great difficulty feeding all those children but like the instincts of lower animals, she did not have one child to give up.

            I once watched a possum, a dog attacking the nest where her young rested, the swinging tail-gnashing teeth of the possum, spectacular weapons. God gave the lower animals survival instincts. In the Kalahari, Botswana Africa, with binoculars (I had a small amount of vision in one eye back then), I watched a great eagle, around her nest, protecting her eaglets. In Antarctica, millions of penguins in the colonies, I watched the male penguin feeding his young.

            The Morris definition for happiness, in spite of the unexpecteds life (disease, storms, fire)...disability, survival skills, having experienced the trauma of the unexpected, going to bed at night, anxious to get up the next morning after a night's rest and start all over again. We have this blessed assurance: "This is the day the Lord hath made, let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalm 118:24).

            There are 1,189 chapters in The Bible, this verse of scripture is exactly half way in The Bible, "[It is] better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man" (Psalm 118:8).  Everything on either side of that verse in God's inherent, sovereign word, proves that our happiness, our ability to continue, purpose for living-soul survival depends on trust in God.

            You do not surrender your soul to moral rot. When you know that Christ came to give us "abundant life" (John 10:10), you can face whatever comes your way when you know that you are chosen, "called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). When your faith determines your circumstances, instead of your circumstances determining your faith, you know what Paul meant when he said, "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31).