Take My Life and Let It Be

Text: Isaiah 6:8, Philippians 1:20-21, Romans 12:1

I was in third grade. For our church’s play, I was dressed as a blue hymnal named Psalty the Singing Songbook. And I had a solo.

Take my life and let it be,
consecrated Lord to Thee.

It was my role to sing this entire song in front of our church, alone. So I practiced those lyrics, making sure I knew each couplet well. I could just see myself mixing up some of the lines and accidentally singing, “take my feet and let them move… let them flow in endless praise.” Which would be wrong. And sound weird.

So I worked hard after school each day to get every single word right. I sang upstairs in my bedroom and outside on my bicycle and waiting at the bus stop. Over and over. Every stanza.

Even today, 25 years later, I can still hear myself singing it. I’m not the best singer in the world (I wouldn’t dare sing a solo now), but I belted out those words with confidence when I was a kid.

I believed them then, the words to this old hymn. I can’t explain it any better than that, but I knew as I was singing that those words were true. Sometimes I think my childhood sang truer than the song my life sings today—less mess and fewer mangled-heart moments in the Annie vault, I guess. My little self meant every single word. I wanted my life to be His.

I had no idea the power of the words I was singing. It didn’t register with my nine-year-old brain that I was proclaiming truth over my life, but I was. I didn’t know what it meant or what it would cost or how it would play out—none of us do, really—but I knew it was what I wanted.

Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.

I believe these words today, just as I did when dressed up like a hymnal in 1989. It’s just that these days I have a little more baggage and a lot more grace. I’m also more assured that this is the path for me. This song, in particular, covers every part of my life: where I walk, what I say, the money I make, and the life I lead. It is all His.

Somehow, as she wrote this hymn in the mid-1800s, Frances Ridley Havergal felt the same push in her soul that I still feel today—to say to God that all I have and all I am is for Him and His glory. There is no category of my life I want to withhold from Him.

People in the Bible—folks who were just like us, not knowing where their lives were going or how their stories would end—said similar things. In Isaiah chapter six, we see Isaiah telling God that he was willing to go wherever God would send him (Isaiah 6:8). In the opening chapter of Philippians, Paul writes that, no matter his situation, he wants his life to glorify Christ, whether in life or in death (Philippians 1:20-21).

So, that is what we sing. And that may be why we sing. Maybe those lyrics say it braver and better than I ever could on my own. The innocence of my childhood voice may have gotten me here today, but it’s the conviction of my voice as an adult that keeps me here, by His grace—offering all I am, and ever will be, to Him.

Take myself and I will be
Ever.
Only.
All for Thee.

Take My Life and Let It Be
Frances R. Havergal, 1874

Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in endless praise.

Take my hands and let them move
At the impulse of Thy love.
Take my feet and let them be
Swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my voice and let me sing,
Always, only for my King.
Take my lips and let them be
Filled with messages from Thee.

Take my silver and my gold,
Not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use
Every pow’r as Thou shalt choose.

Take my will and make it Thine,
It shall be no longer mine.
Take my heart, it is Thine own,
It shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour
At Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself and I will be
Ever, only, all for Thee.