She Gave Away the Jewelry

Frances Ridley Havergal wrote the hymn Take My Life and Let It Be in February 1874, after visiting a house full of friends and family, some of whom did not know Christ. She prayed fervently that God would bring every person under that roof to faith. Over the course of those few days, one by one, each heart opened. Overwhelmed with gratitude, Havergal stayed up through the last night and penned the hymn as an act of total consecration to the Almighty.

But the real story of obedience came after the ink dried. The hymn contains the line, "Take my silver and my gold, not a mite would I withhold." Havergal decided she meant it. She gathered her jewelry collection — pieces she had cherished for years — and sent them to the Church Missionary Society. In a letter to a friend, she wrote that she had never packed a parcel with such pleasure.

That is the difference between singing about obedience and living it. It is easy to offer beautiful words to God on a Sunday morning. It is another thing entirely to open the jewelry box on Monday.

The Lord does not always ask for our gold. But He always asks that we mean what we sing. Obedience begins the moment worship moves from our lips to our hands — when the words we offer El Shaddai with our voices, we also offer with our lives.