SEANMBRAGE

All I Have is Yours (and other statements of the obvious.)

I think one of the most common lyrics in modern worship is “all I have is yours.” While there seem to be plenty of variations on this theme, (take all of me, I give myself away,) it seems to be a recurring idea in worship music. It’s one of the lyrics that I remember singing the most, writing the most, and repeating the most throughout my youth group and even early college days.

My disclaimer to the rest of this post is this: I’m not trying to attack or criticize any particular singer, writer, artist, church, or congregant. I’m simply stepping back and analyzing words that I’ve been singing to God for a very long time without really thinking about them. 

“All I have is yours.” Well, to begin this is a statement of insane obviousness. That’s a terrible sentence, but it fits. While “all I have is yours” is certainly nice, and I recall it always invoking a strong emotional reaction, I take issue with myself here.

1. Do I think God is not aware of the fact that he and he allows owns every iota of reality which exists in the universe? To begin with, duh! Of course “all I have is his.” To bring Kuyper into my fight, “there is not one square inch of the universe over which Christ does not cry out ‘mine!.’” God is the creator and possessor of all things. The fingers I use to type this are gifts given from him, and each breath giving oxygen to lungs, blood and muscle are gifts given by him. Of course it’s his.

2. Did I ever stop to examine the lyrical context or (scarier still,) the intention of my heart when singing “All I have is yours?” Because when I dig deep, there are a couple of really terrifying implications in singing this lyric:

A. It seems entirely likely that this lyric is suggesting or even instilling in me a subconscious belief that God is somehow the benefactor of my worship to him. In singing “all I have is yours,” I’m giving to God something over which he previously held no claim to sovereignty. I, the lord of a great tower and land have surrendered it over to someone that I’ve determined to be worthy of its possession. This is an unbearably sinful thought to think, and I thought it over and over as I sang “all I have is yours” through high school and college, though I never really realized it at the time. The idea that I’m giving to God something he didn’t have before makes this song about how good and gracious I am to God, when all of creation and Scripture points to the contrary.

B. “All I have is yours” does not directly lead us to heresy. But I think it can very easily plant seeds of it. Because underlying this idea of giving God something he didn’t have before generates a subliminal view of God as incomplete in and of himself and needing his creatures to fulfill a need or desire within himself. But God is forever perfectly satisfied in himself, forever enjoying and delighting in his own perfection and glory. He makes creatures to delight in, love, and reflect that glory back to him, that it may be known by all creatures and delighted in forever and ever. So I’m very sorry to tell myself this, but God doesn’t “need” me. 

C. “All I have is yours” reveals another underlying problem in my heart and mind, and that is the issue of blind repetition. Here I find myself assuming that because something sounded spiritual and caused me to have a spiritual-feeling emotional reaction, it is therefore true and worthy of repeating. As a worship leader, blindly leading others to sing this, I’m guilty of a great sin. Rather than weighing the words and language of my songs against the truth and realities of scripture, I’m making my emotions and shallow reasoning the litmus test against which I weigh my liturgy. So here again, I’ve attempted to raise up out of myself an idol, a god-Sean who know’s what’s good, true, and beautiful even if Scripture may point toward the opposite.

D. Lastly (for this post, at least,) the lyric “all I have is yours” can, in the context of “here you go God, I’m at last giving you XYZ” diminishes the saving work of the cross reconciling us to God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because when I sing “all I have is yours,” I’m making a subconscious declaration that because I’m doing X, God will then reward me by doing Y, giving me Z, and making sure I never have to go through (insert suffering here.) I’m singing “all I have is yours,” but I’m believing that if I do one thing, God responds by forgiving me and doing another thing. But the gravity of “we love him because he first loved us gets lost.” The idea here is not “because God loved us, we respond to him and our response stimulates God to act on our behalf.” No, God has already acted through the cross, and it’s only because of that that we are able to love him at all. I love him because he first loved me; without the act of God enabling me for this love, I am in and of myself utterly unable to love God. 

Of course “all I have is [God’s.]” Is there anything that isn’t?