Living Life for Christ Alone

The g rave.   The place of the dead.   The place of no going back.   Many times, this last year, I’ve voiced this very thought to God.   “I have died,” I thought. “I am not the same.”   I would look at the terrain of my soul and not recognize myself.   Trauma, the fires of difficulty, the deep pain of seeing your children struggle, the sorrow of letting go of people you love , the daily in-your-face weakness , a numbing grief ... these were enough to cause pieces of me to die.   Being “hard-pressed on every side,” as Paul put it, “yet not crushed.” And now I find myself “perplexed, yet not in despair.”   I wanted to go back for the longest time, to put pieces of me back together, to make it like it used to be, but the more I dig around in the rubble of my broken self, the more impossible it seems.   I knew it before all of this happened, that going up close to the broken –becoming a part of brokenness- means you are broken too.   But kn...

"No, Lord, not them..."  There has been a truth that God has been bringing me back to over and over in the course of this past year, and it's simple:  Yes, them.  Let me explain. Sometimes I wonder why it is that we who are in Christ struggle to feel God's love for us...  Could it be in part because we are not willing to be His hands and feet of love to the unlovable? In motherhood, I have tasted God's love in laying down my sleep, my own nourishment, my own emotional stability, and almost every other basic need, for the needs of a baby. Could it be that in laying down our lives for the people we don't want to love, we will discover more depths to God's love than we ever dreamed possible? It is our human tendency to love to a limit, but no farther. Believe me, motherhood helps me discover my own limits fast. But what if God's desire were to give us a taste of the limitlessness of His love by calling us beyond our comfort zones and set boundaries?   Wha...

Does surrender save you? I realize that question might have startled you, because it's rather upfront and to the point. Recently I had the privilege of spending time with someone who was struggling with this question.  She had prayed to receive Christ rather recently. In the time since she'd done that, she had heard the phrase, "surrender your life to Christ" in reference to salvation.  "I don't know if I'm going to heaven," she said to me with a look of fear on her face, "because I don't know that I've given Jesus everything." 

"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. Whosoever will save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it." I have been studying this passage for the past week or so, and one thing that I didn't notice at first glance completely changed my perspective on the verse when I finally saw it. It is found in a phrase that occurs twice: "Whosoever will." Both times, "whosoever will" in the Greek means, whoever wants to  or purposes to.  It's not enough!  "Whosoever will come after me..." In our American church, it's easy to become introspective and look for a  desire in yourself to come after Jesus. You might be asked, "do you want  to live for Jesus?" and you say "Yes." Somehow that answer is enough, and we need not worry further as to our spiritual state.

Today, I want to talk about death...  Many of you read that, and whoever was sitting nearest you heard a sharp intake of breath.  No, I am not talking about physical death.  I'm talking about a different kind of death. I alluded to it in my last post, but I must talk more specifically about it, since I myself have been meditating on it more in depth, and praying about it, and seeking to apply it to my own life over the past week. 

Have you ever said that to God? What I am about to write about, I write only because God is telling me to. This is an area that I still have a long way grow in, so as I share, please don't think that I am speaking as one who's already learned it. Understand that I am on this journey too, so as I put some words onto this screen that are going to be somewhat hard to take in, it is for my benefit, as well as yours.