Hymn of the Week: Sunday, April 6, 2025
TAKE MY LIFE AND LET IT BE
Author: Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879)
Music: Henri Abraham Cesar Malan (1787-1864)
English hymnwriter Frances Ridley Havergal was known during her brief life as the “consecration poet” because most of her writing was about living life consecrated to Christian service and worship. She was a brilliant child, memorizing whole books of the Bible starting at age four. “Take My Life and Let It Be” was written in 1874, when she already knew that her frail health was leading toward an early death. The hymn was written all in one evening, and she later wrote, “I was too happy to sleep, and passed most of the night in praise and renewal of my own consecration, and these little couplets formed themselves and chimed in my heart one after another, till they finished with ‘Ever, only, ALL for Thee.’” In her original version, she did capitalize “ALL.” She initially published her hymn using a tune written by her father, but the hymn became popular when published paired with music written in 1823 by Cesar Malan, an ordained pastor from Switzerland, who in addition to writing hymn melodies, traveled extensively as an evangelist. Havergal gave away most of her possessions to support mission work. Though they never met, she was an admirer of the blind American hymnist Fanny Crosby. She died at age 42, reportedly of peritonitis.
Scriptures about Consecration through Dedicating, Surrendering, Yielding to God in Christ Jesus:
Deuteronomy 6:4-9
4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. 7 Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. 8 Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, 9 and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Matthew 22: 37-40
37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Romans 12:1
I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God’s mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship.
1 Corinthians 10: 31
So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.
Philippians 3:8-9
8 More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith.
Study Notes: As you prepare for, or reflect about, our worship this Sunday where we celebrate our new confirmands, think about the vows they are making, and those that you made. Consecration means to dedicate one’s life to a higher purpose, and to live in accordance with that purpose. Consecration to God, as in the first couplet of this hymn, means to be pledged to God’s purposes, as taught by Jesus Christ.
Lyrics:
Take my life and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days,
Let them flow in ceaseless 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 power 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.
