God has been speaking to me about being set apart for Him. Truly living a surrendered life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. To be honest He isn’t just speaking about this any more to me He is shouting, and it’s high time I respond. But what I am learning this that response is harder than I thought it would be. Let me explain a little and I bet you can relate.
To live a life fully surrendered to Jesus as King means He has total control over every area of my life. From what I eat to what I do with my downtime (hint scrolling on Facebook isn’t His priority for me) to when I wake up in the morning. These may sound like small trivial areas but they rule me. Because right now pride rules me. ‘I want what I want when I want it’ has subconsciously become my motto. It’s hot outside and a bowl of ice cream would surely cool me down. So what if it’s 10:00pm. I’ve worked hard this week. I deserve to veg out in front of Friends re-runs that I have seen so many times I know all the lines. I didn’t sleep good last night so I will just turn that alarm off and catch a few extra Z’s. Without meaning to, I have taken control of my life while proclaiming to live for Jesus. None of those things are bad in and of themselves, but they so easily can become my default that I leave no room for God’s plans.
It all started with a definition of humility (the opposite of pride) that I read in a book called The Daniel Dilemma by Chris Hodges. He says “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, humility is thinking of your self less.” It hit me like a ton of bricks. I think about myself a whole lot. I make excuses for myself a lot too. If I am honest I am running my life, not God, because I think about what I want more than I think about what God wants.
God wants all of my heart surrendered to Him. He wants to know that what He wants is higher than what I want. He made it loud and clear in my current Bible study Elijah Faith and Fire by Priscilla Shirer. In it she talks about what it costs to live a life where Jesus is on the throne in every area. She has you look up a couple of verses about putting God first and what it will cost you. And that is where God began to shout, “If you don’t learn to obey in the simple small tasks and set aside your desires for my plans, then you will NEVER be able to do it when it’s a BIG issue and real souls are at stake.”
Hebrews 11:15-16 reads (speaking of those amazing people from the Old Testament that we look up to in the “Hall of Faith”) “If they had been thinking of the country they left, they would have had opportunities to return. Instead they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.”
Did you catch that? ‘God is not ashamed’ meaning that He could be ashamed of them had they chosen the easier road, the comfortable path, the way of convenience, the self satisfying route. The word ashamed means fitting disgrace. Properly disgraced like someone who is singled out because they misplace their confidence. Shame that matches the error of wrongly identifying with something.
The next verse really brought this all home for me. We looked up 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. Verse 2 seemed to jump off the pages. “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” In Ellicott’s Commentary for English readers, he states that “We can scarcely realise now the stumbling-block which the preaching of a crucified Christ must have been to Jews and Greeks, the enormous temptation to keep the cross in the background which the early teachers would naturally have felt, and the sublime and confident faith which must have nerved St. Paul to make it the central fact of all his teaching.” And he also says: “St. Paul did not dwell on the miraculous in the life of Christ, which would have pandered to the Jewish longing for a “sign”; nor did he put forward elaborate “theories” of the gospel, which would have been a concession to the Greek’s longing after “wisdom”. “
You see Paul was a smart man, a highly educated man, a man who knew what he was talking about; but rather than allow his pride in himself rule, he put Christ first. He didn’t give in to what he wanted but rather what Christ wanted. He held to what God wanted rather than what the people around him wanted to hear. He didn’t give in to himself or seek the approval of man over God.
You see if I can’t obey Christ in the private, simple areas like eating and sleeping, how can I squash my selfish wants when people are watching? When people are judging? When people are waiting to approve of me? When the ways of the world are so much easier, and for a few moments seem better?
Priscilla Shirer calls this life a consistent pattern of sacrifice. Sacrificing what I want when I want it so I can have what God wants when He wants it.
I know it won’t be easy, but I know deep in my heart that the reward of knowing God is not ashamed of me and being positioned so God can use me to make a difference for Him in this life far outweigh the cost.
It’s time to count the cost and go for gold…Live fully surrendered to Christ.