Learning to Trust God with Our All

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You gotta admit it, the person who invented the doughnut hole is pretty smart. Create a pastry, put a hole in the middle of it, then turn around and sell the pastry and the hole separately for more money than you could sell them as one. What a racket.

I’m afraid I am kind of like the doughnut maker sometimes in the way that I approach my relationship with God. Rather than give Him my all, for various reasons (fear, ignorance, or plain old selfishness) I give myself to Him in pieces. Either I give Him the hole and I keep the doughnut, or I give Him the doughnut and I keep the hole. I know that He wants (and deserves) my all, but I struggle to give it.

I find it easy enough to sing the old hymn, “I Surrender All,” but not easy to do.

The problem is that I keep bumping into this little word “all” when I read the Bible. Here are a few examples:

“Let ALL that I am praise the Lord; with my whole heart, I will praise his holy name. Let ALL that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me.” David, Psalm 103:1-2

“Trust in the Lord with ALL your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.
In ALL your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6

“And you shall love the Lord your God with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind and with ALL your strength.” Jesus, Mark 12:30

All? Does it really mean all? Yeah, it’s pretty clear that it does. As the saying goes, “All means all and that’s all all means.”

To help us give our all to God, maybe a couple of observations are in order:

1. He gave His all for us. The Apostle Paul summed up the gospel and our response to it: “And He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised” (II Corinthians 5:15). For us to be reconciled to God required that Jesus give His all. And He did.
2. Giving “all” to God includes giving even the messy, confusing stuff that we might think He doesn’t want – our anxieties, frustrations, disappointments, questions, etc.  He wants that stuff, too. For a great example of this, see some of David’s Psalms.

I don’t know about you but I’ve had enough of worshiping God in pieces and parts. Today He gets all of me, even the holes.

It’s a new day with God. Run with it.