Maybe the best we can do is at least ask God for the desire to surrender to His will

From Ashley Cleveland’s memoir Little Black Sheep:

“I had a pastor for many years who forbade us to sing “I Surrender All,” because he said it was a crock. He said no one surrenders all and that most people, if they are honest, aren’t even qualified to sing “I Surrender Some.” I am solidly in that camp. I know all about selective surrender and cherry-picking my life before handing it over to God’s care: “Here , You can have this. I didn’t want it anyway.” 

“God knows all about it too, but here’s the thing: a little bit of surrender is a lot of surrender. By the same token, a little bit of hope is a lot of hope. A little bit of faith is a lot of faith. All of these things have the same source: a heavenly Father who is so entirely counterintuitive that He delights in investing His power in tiny things like mustard seeds and broken fools like me. I don’t really foresee a day when I will let go without a fight, but it’s helpful to remember that I am not, as Richard Rohr says, “giving up but giving to.” There is an enormous difference.”

“My experience of surrender is not a tidy line in the sand, it is more like: let go, take it back , let go, take it back, let go. The day that I will it and the day that I do it are rarely the same day.“

“I had learned in treatment that the gateway to recovery was willingness—willingness to admit my powerlessness, willingness to admit the unmanageability of my life and circumstances, willingness to surrender to God’s care. I needed the will to be willing, and I began to tell the Lord that if He wanted me to turn my wineglass over to Him, He needed to supply me with the will to do it.”