contemplating surrender

I am contemplating surrender and finding that it is not an easy task. It is simple enough to speak with your lips, "Lord, take my heart and let it be/ever only all for thee," to pray "Be my all-in-all; ruin my life, the plans that I've made. It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me."

But how does one sacrifice? How does one eternally give up all claim to earthly possessions and feelings and anxieties and desires? Or rather the question should be "CAN one give up all those things?"

I know with my head that You want The Whole Tree, Lord, and not just this branch here and that limb there. You want to uproot ME. To break ME. To unform ME so that you may plant in MY place a thing that is GOOD and of YOU. And I long for that, Lord, with all that my sinful heart can long.

But must it be a daily surrender?

Must I take up my cross every day?

Must I die a thousand deaths-of-self, offer up my will again and again on Your altar in the hopes of one day being conformed to Your likeness?

Will I ever be whole?

"Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus' Name, Amen."

-A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God