Ok… so I wasn’t completely honest in the last 2 blogs. The truth is you can’t have life without first dying. This wasn’t an oversight on my part, but let me explain what I mean…
There are some spiritual laws that we can’t ignore. One of them, is that in order to have abundant life in the Lord we have to die to our flesh and to the things of the world. Period. There is no having your cake and eating it to. But I don’t think that is the best analogy because although it seems like a terrible thing to have to die to our flesh, once you’ve tasted the life on the other side of that you don’t regret it for a second.
This is where the Lord has brought me. As I asked the question “Lord, what stands in the way of me knowing you more?…what are you asking me to give up? The Lord answered me. He gave me several things. Some are easier than others, but all of them are worth it.
#1. He wants my fear. That I would let it go and not hold onto it as a means to avoid what he’s calling me to . To step out in risk where the lord is my only safety net. This one is a daily dying. Every day I have to wake up and surrender it again. In each new circumstance, there is a little battle… will I be obedient and surrender my fear and move forward or will I retreat. But I believe with each surrendering of it, it becomes a little easier the next time. (It really is a matter of life and death…I don’t believe that just because it’s still a battle for me to choose the “right” thing that I’m not a “good Christian”. Each time, I just practice choosing the life giving option again. There is victory in that!)
#2. He wants my time. All the idle time I spend avoiding hard things or dealing with real issues, or just sitting at His feet. The time during the day I waste on the internet or thinking about random stuff or just being “busy” with whatever I’ve found to occupy my time. He wants that time to train me in His truth. To teach me to trust Him more. Since realizing this I haven’t suddenly stopped wasting my time all together. Habits are hard to break, but the Lord is faithful and it’s worth it to continually give this up to Him. I realized why I waste time instead of spending it with him is because I walked in a subconscious fear that my time with Him would end up empty. That He wouldn’t reveal Himself to me and then I would feel rejected or silly. I recognize that for the lie that it is and praise the Lord, everytime I choose time with Him He reveals more to me.
#3. He wants my stuff. There are some specific things that He has asked me to give away, but for the most part I believe He just wants me to be prepared to give anything and everything away if someone asks it of me or if I see someone in need. This includes my clothes, tent, sleeping bag, camera, ipod, camera, money, etc. (It would include my computer, but the Lord took care of that one His self when it died last month… not having it is one of the things that showed me how much time I wasted!) Also, I am not to refer to anything as “my” or “mine” anymore, because it’s not. The Lord blessed me with all these things. They were His to give me and they are His to take away. I didn’t realize how much these things held me bound. I lived in fear, for some reason, that one day I wouldn’t have enough, but the second I gave this over to the Lord there was this sweet release. I was free from holding on, tooth and nail, to the things I had. I was free to let it go and know that He will still provide for me. It was like holding on for dear life to a tree limb, thinking that if you let go you might fall to your death, only to realize one day that the ground is only 6 inches below your feet. You were so afraid of “what if…” that you hadn’t even taken the time to look down.
“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if , by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.” Philippians 3:8-12
Sometimes the dying is easy. With those things, it’s a complete joy to die to what the Lord is asking me to, so I do it and move forward without a second thought. Sometimes, it’s not that easy. There is something the Lord asked me to do just last night, that was rather painful and it still stings today, but that’s where what I said in part 2 of this blog comes in, we have to stand on what God’s Word says to be true, not just what we feel in the moment. And what I know to be true in my life is that the Lord is good, I can trust Him, and dying to my flesh makes me alive to His goodness. I definitely don’t think that I have it all figured out… but this journey of discovering it is so good.
I wish the words on this page could do justice to the glorious reality of what it means to LIVE in the goodness of the Lord when you chose to DIE to the things of the world… but I think it’s something only experience can really teach you.
Double rainbow over the city of Gua Musang
