Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s
life for his friends….I have called you friends… —John 15:13, 15
{CHAMBERS} “Jesus
does not ask me to die for Him, but to lay down my life for Him. Peter said to
the Lord, “I will lay down my life for Your sake,” and he meant it (John
13:37). He had a magnificent sense of the heroic. For us to be incapable of
making this same statement Peter made would be a bad thing— our sense of duty
is only fully realized through our sense of heroism. Has the Lord ever asked
you, “Will you lay down your life for My sake?” (John 13:38). It is much easier
to die than to lay down your life day in and day out with the sense of the high
calling of God. We are not made for the bright-shining moments of life, but we
have to walk in the light of them in our everyday ways. […] “By this we know
love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our
lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). Yet it is contrary to our human nature
to do so. If I am a friend of Jesus, I
must deliberately and carefully lay down my life for Him. […] Salvation is easy
for us, because it cost God so much. But the exhibiting of salvation in my life
is difficult. God saves a person, fills him with the Holy Spirit, and then
says, in effect, “Now you work it out in your life, and be faithful to Me, even
though the nature of everything around you is to cause you to be unfaithful.””
{ELGIN} When
Jesus spoke to the man who needed to bury his father before following. When He talked with the rich young man who He
challenged to give up all that he treasured to follow Jesus. Jesus knew full well what He was asking them. Choose Jesus over everything else. One of my favorite songs is “Knowing You,
Jesus” written by Graham Kendrick. “All
I once held dear, built my life upon. All this world reveres, and wars to own. All
I once thought gain I have counted loss. Spent and worthless now, compared to
this. Now my heart's desire is to know you more. To be found in you and known
as yours. To possess by faith what I could not earn. All-surpassing gift of
righteousness”
We must choose to follow
Jesus and we must choose to reject the things of this world when they get in
the way of that following. It is not a
natural choice, it is a supernatural one.
It requires surrender … offering yourself as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2) not being conformed to
this world – treasuring what it has to offer – but being transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Paul called it
our “reasonable service of worship”. Why
is it reasonable? Because Jesus laid His life down for us. You cannot serve God and the world. You will hate one and love the other. (Matthew 6:24) You have believed a lie from Satan if you
think otherwise. (Joshua 24:15) “But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you,
then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your
ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose
land you are living. (or the god of this country – money and affluence) But as
for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
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