The Hymn

 In my prayer journal today I came upon the lyric for the powerful hymn, Jesus Paid It All, by Elvina Hall. This is a hymn I have sung more times than I can remember. You may be able to say the same. I wonder, in all the churches, choirs, worship teams and people where it has been sung and by those who have sung it, just how real are those lyrics to us? To you, and to me?

I hear the Savior say, thy strength indeed is small; child of weakness watch and pray. Fine in Me thy all in all. Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Sin has left its crimson stain, He washed it white as snow. Undeniably powerful words. How real are they in our daily experience?

I wrote the other day of A.W, Tozer saying that we use the language of power, but that our deeds are the deeds of weakness. I'm sure we don't see it that way. We feel like we're doing things with all our strength, and I'm sure we are. We just don't seem to grasp that all of our strength will never be enough to overcome the evil one and the fallen world we live in. In fact, we're so absorbed in taking on that world in our own strength that we can't even hear the words He speaks to us in the process. We don't want to admit that we're weak, so we never hear His voice telling us that we're too weak to prevail. So we wear ourselves out and never seem to really progress in our journey with Him. So the first thing needed in living out this hymn is to learn to hear His voice. Can we be still enough to do so?

If and when we hear His voice, almost always He will tell us to do nothing else but to "watch and pray." Yes, there will be a time to act, but we act only upon the direction He gives, and that direction comes as we are still before His Presence. Listening for His voice and His heart. As we listen, we also watch. When we do this, something miraculous and wonderful will take place. We discover in ways we never knew the infinite power and wonder of who He is. Something mystical happens. In the stillness He invited us to bring all that we to all that He is. He invites us, calls us, to bring all our ourself into all of Himself. It is then that we discover that He is our "all in all."

Why do so few of us seem to enter into this place? I think it's because we don't realize how sin has so completely permeated this world we live in. It has left its stain upon everything, including us. There is no way that we can rid ourselves of that stain. The sin that entered into the human race through the rebellion of Adam and Eve has left us with a debt that we can never repay. That's why the Father sent His Son, Jesus, to pay that debt though His death on the cross. And He sealed the victory won there with His resurrection to life from that death. He paid the debt we could not pay and He paid it all. Jesus paid it all. Yet somehow, we struggle to believe this. There must be something we have to add, and there is. We have to cease our striving and enter into the finished work of Jesus Christ. That's the only way to erase the stain of sin. Have you entered into that work? If not, will you not enter into it now?

We are lost without Him and all our striving will not help us. May we confess our weakness and the stain of sin in our lives, and then answer His call to enter into His life through the finished work of the cross.  May we know, finally, that He not only paid it all, but that He is our all in all.

Blessings,
Pastor O