Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – there is a surrender required, a willingness to walk away from the life I have created in order to walk into the true life that God holds out to me. I must die and be resurrected into His new life.
Mark 8:34-35 TPT
[34] Jesus summoned the crowd, along with his disciples, and had them gather around. And he said to them: “If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely disown your own life. And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to my ways. [35] For if you let your life go for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you will continually experience true life. But if you choose to keep your life for yourself, you will forfeit what you try to keep.
Observation
There is always a letting go of the ways of the world in order to embrace the ways of God. The kingdom of God does not fill a void, it replaces what is already shaping my life. Love replaces hate, forgiveness replaces revenge, others replaces self. The model in scripture is death and resurrection. I must die to the world systems and darkness shaped truth in my life, in order to be raised into the shaping truth of God. Whether it is dying to the ways of my family, or the ways of self focus, there is a “disowning”, a death, of my life that takes place in order to be resurrected into His life.
We all want to “continually experience true life,” but in order to do this we must let go of the life we have crafted outside of Gods ways. God wants us to walk in His ways not so that we will be acceptable to him, he has made my right with him story complete in what Jesus has done for me. His desire that I walk in His ways is purely that I would experience the true life he intended for me from the beginning of time. So often I live out of the false me, the true me, the true life that God offers me, is life as his son, life in His image, life as His beloved, life lived in His ways. This is true life, this is true me.
If I choose to keep living the way of the world, being shaped by evil, then the life I so desperately desire I will forfeit. The systems of the world operate contrary to the ways of God. They hold out a promise of true life, but the evidence is overwhelming otherwise. My intellect struggles to “be willing to share the cross of Jesus and experience it as my own.” Experiencing the cross is embracing the ways of God even when we don’t want to drink of that cup. It’s not wanting to go where He calls, walk in His ways, but embracing His will and not mine. It’s when I win the wrestle of my ways versus His ways, even when His ways don’t make sense to me, this is when I enter into the true life of God. The experience of the cross is the stance of obedience that leads me into the experience of true life.
Application
I choose to die to the ways of the world and the ways authored by darkness, and the life I have created as shaping truth – and to be resurrected into your true life. I choose to experience the path of the cross and drink the cup, even when I don’t get its content or ways, on the basis that you invite me into his drinking. Not my ways but yours, even when I can’t comprehend how they can lead me into true life, this is the life of faith I will follow in order to walk in true life of your Kingdom. I will disown this life shaped and created by family, by worldly systems, by evil, that contradicts the path you invite me to walk. I surrender my ways, to know yours.
Response
Thank you that true life is freely available to all who would come and walk the path. Thank you that it is walking with you, not walking alone. Thank you that you intimately guide, intimately empower, the path of true life. Thank you for the invitation to surrender, to leave the embrace of my smallness that I may walk in the continual discovery of your greatness. I want to experience true life and I know how. I am a blessed.
Meditation
JOURNEY DEEPER
