dying to live

In the world, life precedes death- but in the Kingdom, just the opposite is true.

After death, there is resurrection. This is what we base our hope on as followers. Death to ourselves and our sins, so that we may find our lives in Him:

If you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it, but if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms.

~Luke 17:33 MSG

This is perhaps the most excruciating, yet liberating part of following Christ: we must die to ourselves and surrender it all to Him. I think of all the little daily things I am not willing to surrender, let alone the big things. But He wants it all- He wants all of us.

In the Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer describes this process at length:

For this God-above-all position is one not easy to take. The mind may approve it while not having the consent of the will to put it into effect. While the imagination races ahead to honor God, the will may lag behind and the man never guess how divided his heart is. The whole man must make the decision before the heart can know any real satisfaction. God wants us all, and He will not rest till He gets us all. No part of the man will do.

This process is a painful one, to be completely honest. When we were new believers, just starting to get to know Christ, it seemed easier- He wasn’t yet dealing with our deeper sins and heart postures, but rather just drawing us close to Himself. He wooed and enchanted us with His grace and mercy, with the beauty of His creation, and the new and fulfilling Christ-centered relationships we made within the body. We were “on fire” for God; the passion was ablaze, and we were ready to completely submit and surrender our lives to whatever His will may be for us. After living for so long without Him, following Him was a fresh, cool drink of water.

But then He calls us deeper.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.

~Psalm 47:2

He begins to ask us to do harder things, to give up more than we ever thought He would ask of us. The process of maturity is initiated. We can no longer live the way we once did before we began following Him. We aren’t fulfilled by the same things, aren’t satisfied or comforted by the things we once were. We find that we have to keep going back to Him, abiding in Him constantly, or we seem to fall apart. The stakes are higher- we feel like there is more to lose by turning away. We become more aware of our own sin and the ways we fall short, more desperate for Jesus to cleanse us and make us new. We are tempted to despair of our own brokenness, but He offers us a different way.

He brings us to the brink of ourselves, so that we realize how dead we are without Him.

And then, only then, can we take up our cross. After the flesh has been starved, the Spirit can be fed. We begin our new lives in Him, completely rid of ourselves.

This takes discipline and practice. It takes courage and commitment, patience and grace. He calls us to our highest selves- holds us to the highest standard. He is a consuming fire and the closer we get, the more our old selves will burn away. He refines us and shapes us to be like Him, to become righteous in his sight.

This is what we sign up for when we decide to follow Him. It’s not the easy life- He doesn’t always take away our troubles and give us comfort; in fact, that is rarely His way. Rather, through testing and trials He teaches us obedience, and as we learn to obey Him more and more because we know He has our very best in mind, we will find life to the full. Just when you think it is the end, it is actually the beginning of something new and beautiful.

We no longer have to fear death, because Life always emerges out of the ashes.