The importance of surrendering
We learn from Jesus and Jeremiah on the path to life
Verse of the Day: “Then Jesus said to his disciples, “if any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” - Matthew 16:24-25
“if any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways”….I pray that if you are reading this, that you want to be Jesus’ follower. It will be the best journey of your life. The wisest decision you can ever make. The best thing to ever say “yes” to. But when we make the decision to live for Christ, we have to put away our own selfish ways. Because Jesus is God, and God is love, we can have nothing to do with selfishness. Selfishness is the enemy of love. A loving person considers others first. A selfish person considers nobody first but themselves.
“take up your cross, and follow me”……I like the picture Jesus paints here. This is prophetic language because He had yet to be hung on the cross when He told His disciples this. However, it was the cross where Jesus’ work was finished. Where His blood made us all new. Jesus made the biggest sacrifice of all time on that day, on that cross. And when we follow Him, we, too, have to make sacrifices. While our sacrifices will never amount up to what Jesus did on the cross, this is something we have to do when we follow Him. Love requires sacrifice. Let us take up our crosses today and follow Him.
“If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it”……Jesus took up His cross, died a criminal’s death on the cross and took on the monumental penalty of our sin. Jesus defeated death and on the third day, He rose. His resurrection shows us how at the power of Jesus, we are made new. When we decide to follow Jesus, we cannot hang on to the old way we were used to living. Jesus says in John 3 that “unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” We cannot remain the same person after we choose to accept and follow Jesus. A life following Christ requires sacrifice, it requires repentance, it requires forgiveness, and above all else, it requires an obedient heart to follow God even when it doesn’t make complete sense in our limited humanly minds. In the world we live in, staying entrenched on “our side", sticking to our guns and standing our ground all the way to worldly victory is widely celebrated. It’s the reason there is so much division in our world. Worldly people want their way to be the only way and will fight like hell, cut off anybody and anyone who stands in their way, in order for things to be that way. However, in this Christian life, surrendering is our key to victory. We have to release control to God and let Him do what only He can do. His side is the only side for us to be on.
“But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it”…..Here is where surrender leads to victory. By surrendering our way of living, and giving it up to follow Jesus, Jesus tells us that we indeed will save our lives by doing this.
To put this into context, let’s go back to the book of Jeremiah. I have been working my way through Jeremiah in recent weeks, and the Babylon Exile is a very interesting story.
To make a long story short, God was tired of His people turning away from Him for hundreds of years and living in rebellion, so He allowed the King of Babylon to come in and siege Jerusalem. God wanted the hearts of His people and would save those who turned to Him in repentance and gave up their lives for Him.
Here is a simple command that again, in our human minds, would not make much sense at all if we were living in Jerusalem at the time, but is prophetic for the above message that Jesus preached more than 500 years later.
“Tell all the people, ‘This is what the Lord says: Take your choice of life or death! Everyone who stays in Jerusalem will die from war, famine, or disease, but those who go out and surrender to the Babylonians will live. Their reward will be life!’” - Jeremiah 21:8-9
As we see here, surrender leads to life. Going our own way and living in rebellion to God, ends in death. What will you choose today? Life or death? The way to life is following Jesus. He is the way, the truth and the life. And in order for us to follow Him, we must surrender our selfish ways and turn to Him. He is good and He can be trusted to keep His promise. Let us take up our cross today and live in a way that honors Jesus and helps us become more like Him.