There are many occasions in a church where people are challenged to respond to God’s call. Perhaps it’s at a missions conference: “Is God calling you to take the gospel to some other land?” Perhaps it’s at an evangelistic meeting: “Is God calling you to put your trust in Jesus Christ and Him alone for your salvation?” Perhaps it’s at a parenting discipleship gathering: “Is God calling you to become more serious about raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord?” Perhaps it’s at a Sunday morning worship service when members are asked to commit to tithing in their financial support of the church in the year ahead: “Is God calling you to step forward and trust Him to meet your needs when you make your giving decisions for the upcoming year?”. Perhaps it’s at a marriage renewal seminar: “Is God calling you to a fresh commitment to your spouse?”
Whatever the occasion, the hymn that is often selected to conclude that call to commitment is this well-known song by Frances Ridley Havergal (1836-1879), “Take My Life and Let It Be … Consecrated, Lord, to Thee.” This is the best known of her 71 hymn lyrics (which also includes the hymn, “Lord, Speak to Me, That I May Speak”). “Take My Life” is beautiful in its simplicity of language and at the same time its intensity of devotion. Not only is it a prayer directed to the Lord. Every stanza begins with the word “take.” This is the essence of worship, built on the sacrificial system of the Old Testament, in which we bring ourselves and all that we have to give to the Lord, asking that He take us and our gifts, and use them to advance the cause of the gospel.
Miss Havergal was born in Astley, England, December 14, 1836. The home of William Henry Havergal, vicar of Astley in Worcestershire, was no exception. He himself was an accomplished musician and hymn writer; and his discussions with Frances on music, composition, and hymn-writing were the major encouragement for her own work. Frances was affectionately devoted to both her family and her church. She loved her middle name, Ridley, that of the martyr Nicholas Ridley, who died during the 16th century reign of Roman Catholic “Bloody Mary,” and to whom the family was related.
Frances had three sisters (one of whom, Maria, later wrote her biography) and two brothers, both of whom entered the preaching ministry. She was an attractive, cheerful, and intelligent child, full of fun. By the age of four she could read the Bible, and had learned to write. The family would gather on Sunday evenings to sing hymns, and little Frances keenly joined in. During these years her father was not well. His great solace was composing music for cathedral services, many hundreds of chants (for singing the Psalms), and hymn tunes. He always gave the income from these to the work of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), a missionary society of the Church of England. Both parents were very keen to teach their children to love the Savior, and in one letter written to Frances when she was staying with her grandparents her mother Jane wrote, “May my Fanny know and love Jesus Christ! Then she will be sure to go to heaven whether she dies young or old.” Sadly, Jane herself died when Frances was only eleven. When she became ill, something she said to Frances was forever etched in her memory: “Fanny dear, pray to God to prepare you for all that He is preparing you.” Frances had not expected her mother’s death, and it was a deep shock to her.
However, her interest in the gospel had been increasing for some time. Frances wrote in her twenties that one of the turning points in that direction was a sermon she heard when about nine years old, which aroused uneasiness about the state of her soul. “At this time,” she later wrote, “I don’t think I had any clear ideas about believing on the Lord Jesus, and so getting rid of the burden which had pressed so long upon my little soul. My general notion was that I didn’t love God at all, and was very bad and wicked altogether; and that if I went on praying very much, something would come to me and change me all at once, and make me like many whom I read about and a few whom I saw. As for trying to be good, that seemed of next to no use; it was like struggling in a quicksand, the more you struggle the deeper you sink.”
Another person God used to help Frances was Miss Caroline Cooke, a lady who later married her father and became, as Frances called her, “my loved mother.” She was visiting Frances’s married sister Miriam at the same time as she was, a few months after Christmas. One evening, sitting on the sofa, as they were talking, Frances told her there was nothing she longed for more than to be forgiven. Miss Cooke asked Frances a question which led to the hearty answer that she would be willing to lose everything – even her best-loved papa, her brothers and sisters and all she loved – if she could gain this. Miss Cooke encouraged her that if that was the case, she was sure it would not be very long before her desire was granted. And then she asked, “Why cannot you trust yourself to your Savior at once? Supposing that now at this moment, Christ was to come, could you not trust Him?” That was enough for Frances. As soon as she could, she raced upstairs to her room, flung herself on her knees and committed herself, in genuine saving faith, to Jesus. The change in her heart was unmistakable. The Bible became, for the first time, a delight to her, and she understood it with new eyes. The Holy Spirit had truly changed her heart.
But she was also an intelligent woman, with unusually developed gifts, and she used these very much to God’s glory. Languages were a special talent. At one time she studied Hebrew and made a particular study of the Psalms (no doubt helpful to her in hymn writing). She had earlier learned Greek with her father, so that she could study the New Testament in the original language. She was also fluent in German and French; and in her late teens spent a number of months at school in Germany (delighting herself by coming first in German in a class of German-speaking girls!). But her greatest joy was studying Scripture. She made it her business to read it morning and night; reflecting on the daily, practical ways she should be changed by it “into the likeness of Christ.” Together with one of her lifelong friends, Elizabeth Clay (whom she had met at school), she memorized large portions of the Bible. By her early adulthood she knew all four Gospels, the Epistles, Revelation, the Psalms, and Isaiah (her favorite book) by heart; and later she memorized the Minor Prophets.
During a period in 1873 Frances became increasingly aware of the seriousness of sin, and wrote that any compromise, any dalliance with it spoils our fellowship with God, even though it be for a moment, till we repent and ask forgiveness. Soon she became increasingly convinced of the need for total consecration of ourselves to God, and this became a constant theme of her conversation and of her hymns. The famous hymn, “Take My Life and Let It Be” comes from this period, and she recorded the circumstances of it in a letter.
On the first of February, 1874, she was visiting in a home where there were ten persons, some of them not converted, some of them Christians, but not very happy ones. A great longing seized upon Miss Havergal that all of these might, before she left, come to know her Savior as joyfully as she had just come to know Him. She prayed, “Lord, give me all this house.” That prayer was granted, even before she left the house. On the last night of her stay, February 4, she was too happy to sleep, and spent most of the night in praise and renewal of her own consecration, writing this hymn, closing with the triumphant line, “Ever, ONLY, ALL for Thee!”
This desire to share Christ with others was the pattern of all her short life. Energetic in service, she continued her pattern of Sunday School teaching, helping in her own congregation, and visiting her married sisters to help them in their households and to teach their children. Her last illness and death came quite suddenly, while she was on holiday with Maria in Wales in 1879. At the age of only 42, she succumbed (it is thought), to peritonitis, dying with the words “So beautiful to go” on her lips. She was buried at Astley, and on her tombstone is engraved, as she herself wished, her favorite text: “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.”
The music most often associated with the test of this hymn is the 1827 tune HENDON, composed by Henri Abraham César Malan (1787-1864). Born in Geneva, Switzerland into a bourgeois family that had come to Geneva to escape religious persecution during the French Revolution. He finished college at the Academy at Geneva (founded by Calvin) and was ordained to the ministry in 1810. Thou originally a Unitarian, within a few years he had embraced the evangelical gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Christ alone.
In 1817 he preached around Geneva, and one sermon in particular, “Man only justified by faith alone” created a firestorm and brought him into conflict with religious authorities of the region. From then on he wished to help reform the national church from within. In 1820 he built a chapel in his garden and obtained the license of the State for it as a separatist place of worship. He preached in that chapel 43 years. In 1823 he was formally deprived of his status as a minister of the national Church. Various events caused his congregation to diminish over the next few years, and he began long tours of evangelization subsidized by religious friends in his land, Belgium, France, England and Scotland. He often preached to large congregations. Malan also authorized a hymn book, “Chants de Sion” (1841).
A strong Calvinist, Malan lost no opportunity to evangelize. On one occasion an old man he visited pulled Malan’s hymnal out and told him he had prayed to see the author of it before he died. On a visit to England Malan also inspired author, Charlotte Elliott, to write the hymn lyrics for “Just As I Am”, when seeking an answer to her conversion she asked and he advised her to come to Christ ‘just as she was’. He was honored by a visit from the Queen of Holland two years before his death. He is mainly remembered as a hymn writer, having written more than a thousand hymn lyrics and tunes. To English readers Malan is chiefly known as a hymn-writer through translations of his “Non, ce n’est pas mourir”: “It is not death to die.”
In Romans 12:1-2, Paul beseeched his readers by the mercies of God to present their bodies as living sacrifices. That is the sentiment that pervades Havergal’s hymn. As we sing it, we should imagine ourselves standing before the Lord in His throne room, kneeling before Him with outstretched arms in which we offer everything about ourselves to Him without reservation and with great joy.
Stanza 1 starts by asking God to take our entire life, every moment of every day, to be consecrated to Him. Such consecration will make Him central in all that we do, and will result in a life of “endless praise.” It follows from Paul’s challenge to the Corinthians that whetever5 they do, they should do all to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31). It’s also reminiscent of Psalm 90:12, that since God has given us all our moments and our days, we need to number them and give them all back to Him.
Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.
Take my moments and my days; let them flow in endless praise.
Stanza 2 moves on to identify our hands and feet as particular dimensions of our life where we ask the Lord to take control. Pleasing Him involves serving Him with “holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8). And everything we do for Him ought to be done with hands and feet guided by the impulse of God’s love for us that preceded and caused our love for Him (1 John 5:3). What a lovely picture is communicated by the vision of our feet being swift and beautiful in serving Him (Romans 10:15).
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.
Stanza 3 asks that God take our vocal communication and turn it into gospel proclamation. Our voices are gifts from Him, that coupled with renewed hearts, will always want to sing praises to Him, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” (Colossians 3:16). He is the one who made our mouths and has shown us such redemptive and providential wonders that should cause us to used our lips to pass along messages from His Word that He brings to our minds as we seek to teach others (1 Timothy 2:2).
Take my voice and let me sing always, only, for my King.
Take my lips and let them be filled with messages from thee.
Stanza 4 asks that the Lord accept our gift of our wealth and our intellect. Our wealth is not ours; it is the Lord’s. And not just the tithe; but all of it. Will we use our silver and our gold to accumulate more earthly treasure for ourselves: bigger homes, newer cars, more extravagant vacations, larger retirement portfolios? Or will we invest in the kingdom of God through support of the ministries of our local churches, increased support for the foreign missionaries we send out, financial assistance to the Christian colleges that are training a new generation of leaders with a biblical world and life view? And what about our minds? Will we be most interested in learning more about geo-politics and the economy, or in learning more about the character and will of God, and the means of growth for our souls?
Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.
Take my intellect and use every power as thou shalt choose.
Stanza 5 asks God to take possession of our wills, our decision making process. We speak of that, as does the Bible, as being centered in our hearts, where we choose those things we desire. But our desire is still too much focused on self, what we want, rather than what God wants. When we think of the throne in our loves, in too many instances we remain seated on that throne. But our prayer here is that God would knock us off of that throne, and make our heart the royal throne on which He sits and rules. It’s what Paul meant when he wrote in Ephesians 3:17 that He would dwell in our hearts by faith.
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.
Stanza 6 asks that He would take our love, the attitudes that affects those things which mean the most to us, which are most satisfying to us. Rather than loving things of the world, we want Him to change our “wanter” so that we would love Him and the things of eternal spiritual value even kore than life itself. The stanza imagines a scene in which we approach the Lord, bow before Him in loving adoration, and lean forward as if we were a pitcher that then pours our very self at His feet as a sacrifice of praise, something that would be the greatest treasure that we have, now devoted to Him. It concludes with the phrase that meant so much to Havergal when she wrote the hymn.
Take my love; my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.
Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.
Here you can listen to the hymn, though with a slight alteration in the sequence of lyrics.