The decision to walk with Jesus is the biggest life decision we can ever make. It means giving up every aspect of life that is a living rebellion against God. It requires a careful decision. We in Rescued For Love would rather you take weeks or even months of study and prayer before making the decision. We do not take personal pride in decisions to follow Jesus. It is the work of God; we just serve. We respect every person’s thoughts and plans. A decision should not be made based on emotion alone. The full cost of following Christ must be considered and every person must be willing to give what is required.
Our appeal to people is not a bait and switch tactic where you make a decision, get a ticket to heaven, and then discover that you have to conform to a high standard of morality on your own ability and resolve. Or that your performance is then under the watchful eye of those who think they have done it right. We, instead, are presenting a relationship with Jesus that provides the power of love, now, that will transform your inward self to a love that produces victory over circumstances and virtue, without relying on self-love, self-power, guilt and personal achievement. The personal requirement, however, is great and we spell that out up front.
We Must Give Up Our Right To Our Self:
As Oswald Chambers, the classic devotional author, often said, “We need to give up our right to our self.” So we have a right to be respected, but we need to give it up and allow people to disrespect us. In the place of the respect of people we get the love of God. To know that the creator of the universe loves us and wants to have an eternal relationship with us is the greatest value possible. The comparison is like getting ten million dollars from God instead of ten dollars from people. We are not saying the respect of people has no value but compared to that of God we can easily let it go.
We have a right to justice, to be treated fairly, but in this selfish world, with most people out for themselves alone, it does not always happen. We need to give up that right in order to walk with Jesus and be effective in working for Him. Again, the value of God’s love is so much more. Instead of feeling hurt, our new emotion becomes empathy, knowing the unjust person is needlessly suffering without a relationship with Jesus. We have no need to get even. Insisting or even fighting for our right to be treated fairly is to ignore the great free gift of God’s love. Keeping our minds fixed on God’s love puts us in a position to love others where otherwise we could not. Everyone wants to love and be loved but only a few find the unlimited supply in God. When we, even for a moment, prefer self-justice over God’s love to us, we fall back into destructive thinking. We need to seek first the love of God. Receiving God’s power in love may not be immediate. It is not an effect that is caused by our behavior. It is a free gift of God and is given when we are open to Him and willing to give up self-serving.
We Must Give up Using Pleasure as a Means to Fulfillment:
Pleasure is not in itself evil. All healthy pleasures are given by God for our enjoyment. They remind us of God’s generosity and His intention that we enjoy all of life. There is a great difference, however, in how they are enjoyed. There are two ways. Either we can use pleasure as a means to find fulfillment in this worldly life or, having already found fulfillment in Jesus we can enjoy pleasure to its fullness in thankfulness to the creator. When pleasure is pursued in order to achieve fulfillment, we are left empty and we may become obsessed in pursuing more and more. But, when we first find fulfillment through Jesus alone, then we can enjoy pleasure as God intended without the emptiness and without the addiction. We can enjoy pleasure and thank God for them but not depend on them for our fulfillment.
We Must Give Up Seeking For Glory:
We learn as children that doing the right things brings praise. Those who are most accomplished in music, school grades, sports, or entertainment, get more praise than the average person. It can become addicting but the lack of encouraging words in our childhood can be worse. Trying in vain to please a parent, during childhood, can put us on an all-consuming life pursuit of achievement to gain personal glory. Receiving praise is one of the pleasures of life, especially if it is sincere. But it needs to be handled as all pleasures should be handled. The pleasure of praise will not bring fulfillment to our lives and the pursuit will be frustrated as there will never be enough.
With God’s help we can be aware when we are pursuing glory for ourselves and ask Him to fill us with His glory, the glory that is His alone.
We Must Give Up Self-Sufficiency:
As finite beings we are not self-sufficient. We were created to receive the resources of God. Everything in our life is dependent. We did not create ourselves or rear ourselves. We depend on oxygen, water and food from the outside. We must build our own shelters. We rely on teachers to learn. We must co-operate with others to live. But in disregard of all of the physical evidence, we all, in opposition to God, have relied on ourselves in the spiritual realm. Self-provisioning is the practice of relying on our own ability to be good enough, to love enough, to find our own significance, to be happy, and to be pleased with life. We seek for love in relationships and when one does not work, we give up, live in misery or try another. We seek to be significant in our own performance, achievement, good looks, clothes, or personality. We might seek to be more human in life through the appreciation of the arts, or music, or literature, which is wonderful, but in our self-seeking and pride, we spoil it by making a show of it. When our goal becomes respect and we do not receive it, we grow bitter.
All the spiritual provisioning that we need is found in our walk with Jesus. So rather than trying to extract life, significance and love from our activities, our achievements, and our relationships, we can receive them freely through Jesus. Once our needs are filled in Him, we can be oriented toward giving instead of receiving. We can give ourselves in the enjoyment of the arts without being seen by others. We can also give ourselves in creating things that are beautiful and functional without needing appreciation, and we can enjoy pleasure without being addicted. With our significance found in the love of Jesus, we are free to accomplish, to perform, to create, and to give without those activities defining who we are. Also, we are able to love both those who love us and those who do not, without disappointment and without running short of the resource.
How To Give Up Self-Serving:
The way to give up self is to first be aware of what we are thinking, saying and doing. We can then check ourselves when we see that we are self-serving, looking for praise, putting our needs before others, unwilling to give up our time or our plans, unaware of other people’s needs, seeking love without sacrifice, feeling sorry for ourselves, resentful, gossiping, criticizing, judging, getting even, impatient, or giving up on life. Most of us are blind to these things until we are sincere about seeking a life with Jesus. Once we are aware of what we are doing, we can ask God to replace our self-serving with His love for others.
The beginning point is to acknowledge that it is through the victory of Jesus over sin and death that we can be accepted into the people of God through forgiveness. We must simply and openly ask God for this forgiveness and access and know that He will grant it. This is only the beginning. Over time, as we continue in a walk with Jesus, God will work His power of love into us. We first need time to learn about our new life through the Bible and through the church and through friends who know the Lord. Then there will come a time–and often it can be pinpointed as a one-time event–when we realize that we need to give our all to God, but the actual giving of our self is something that we must do every day. It gets easier as the days go by. It is through this process that we are transformed over time by the Holy Spirit to the character of Jesus within.
Following Jesus:
A clue to following Jesus daily is given in the beginning of Colossians chapter 3. It says that we are to set our minds on the things that are above, not on things that are on the earth. We need to look for God’s perspective of people and situations. Once we see how God has loved us, through our rebellion, we know how to love others who are still in their rebellion. We are then protected from, and can even love, those who otherwise would destroy us with their anger, resentment, and insults. Without God, we let our experiences, situations, roadblocks, losses, difficulties, illnesses, tragedies, and childhood experiences determine our life. We cannot help these reactions but we can be aware of them and ask God through Jesus to transform us to His idea of our life. We can then rise above these setbacks as we look to the things that are above.
We cannot have a clear vision of heaven unless we fill our life with heavenly things. We may have to cut back on even some good things in our life in order to spend more concentrated time on heavenly things. We need to read and study our Bible. If we do it with Jesus in mind, it will not be a boring task but will be more like reading a love letter which pleases and thrills us.
Life in Jesus is not a solitary walk. We need to associate with like-minded people. This means attending public worship and learning together in Sunday school and small group studies. Our prayer life is of two types. One is specific times when we stop to pray and the other is an on-going conversation with God as we walk in the world. As we grow in the love of Jesus, these times will not be a burden but times of joy and comfort.
When we are in the presence of God, we have a passion to know Him and to worship Him. The practices of a life in Jesus have a supernatural aspect to them but they will seem natural.
Let us know at Rescued For Love how we can continue the conversation.