Check out what comes out of Monroe, Michigan!
excerpt from "Then Sings my Soul-150 of the World's Greatist Hymn Stories""But now; O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and all we are the work of Your hand" Isaiah 64:8
Someone once said, "Only in the Christian life does surrender bring victory." Judson Wheeler Van De Venter learned that for himself.
Born on a farm in Monroe County, Michigan in 1855, Judson grew up interested in art and music. He was converted to Christ at age 17. After graduating from college in Hillsdale, Michigan, Judson became an art teacher and then supervisor of art for the high school in Sharon, Pennsylvania. In 1885, he toured Europe, visiting art galleries and museums and studying painting. He was also a musician, having studied in numerous singing schools.
All the while, Judson was heavily involved in his local Methodist Episcopal Church where he sang in the choir. He found himself especially fulfilled when participating in evangelistic rallies and revivals in which people recieved Christ as their personal Savior. Friends encouraged him to resign from the school system to enter fulltime music evangelism, but for five years he struggled with the decision.
Finally falling to his knees, he said, "Lord, if you want me to give my full time to Thy work, I'll do it, I surrender all to Thee." For the next several years he traveled extensively through the United States, England, and Scotland, assisting in evangelistic work, leading the singing for Wilber Chapman and other evangelists, and winning men and women to Christ.
While engaged in meetings in East Palestine, Ohio, Judson stayed in the home of George Sebring (whose family founded Sebring, OH, and who himself later founded Sebring, Florida). It was there that he wrote the hymn," I Surrender All ," while recalling his own personal submitting to full-time ministry.
Moving to Tampa in 1923, he began teaching hymnology at Florida Bible Institute. He retired after several years, but still occasionally showed up on campus to lecture or to speak in chapel.
In the 1930s, a student at Florida Bible Institute sat wide-eyed, listening to Judson Van DeVenter. That student, Billy Graham, later wrote," One of the evangelists who influenced my early preaching was also a hymnist who wrote 'I Surrender All,' the Rev. J. W. Van DeVenter. He was a regular visitor at the Florida Bible Institute (now Trinity Bible College) in the late 1930s. We students loved this kind, deeply spiritual gentleman and often gathered in his winter home at Tampa, Florida, for an evening of fellowship and singing."
side note: if he wrote the hymn long after surrendering, it only follows that God's will to have him leave the school and be devoted full-time was more fulfilling than he could have hoped- so much so that he burst into song about surrendering Everything Else to God, as his first major risk was a huge success!
=)
posted by jana @ 11:37 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home