“For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it”.
-Matthew 16:25
I’ve taken some significant steps of obedience in my wild adventures with Jesus over the years. I’ve resigned from good paying jobs with nothing to go to; given up things I wanted to cling to…and left everything at 9 weeks notice on a one way ticket to pioneer a church plant in Europe. However, the last 12 or so months stretched me beyond engaging my will with His, to simply having to yield mine completely. The obedience the Lord has required of me in this season has bent me, broken me, and reduced me…and yet, I have never felt so free.
In 2022, as I wrestled with what this transition season might look like, it culminated in an 8 week period of laying down my life in 3 major spheres: Relationship, Resignation & Repositioning in the body of Christ. At age 40, it seemed a brutal combination of wiping the board of my life without a promise of what would be written in its place, but for a simple instruction of "NO PLAN B". I must admit that this instruction from the Lord made me laugh…as if I even had a parachute left?!
6 months on into this journey of obedience and it felt like everything had been burned to the ground. My bank account, my dignity, my options…but funnily enough I also found that things like my pride and self sufficiency had perished in the same fire. I realise now that those things simply don’t belong on the other side of the Jordan in the land of promise. I have discovered the difference between the suffering that comes from forging our own path and the pain we must willingly choose, in order join Him on His. One is a consequence and the other consecration. One is our Ishmael and the other, Isaac. As we know, it is through Isaac that we are reckoned. And this was a moment of reckoning for me.
See Jesus calls us through doorways that our flesh can’t pass through. Each step of obedience is a call to cut the fat, for our flesh to be stripped down to our bones that He might once again form us from the dust up. Obedience to Christ is where our reason must bow to revelation, comfort must make way for covenant, and our preferences must stop defining the price. It requires us to choose to let go of what we treasure, in order to take hold of that which is truly valuable. To lay something down in the flesh to obtain something only our spirit can inherit. It’s why a camel is more likely to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom. Because to be truly part of His Kingdom, you can’t be the one sitting on the throne. You must crawl off the lofty seat that was never meant for you and on to the altar of fire…where when He is done with you, all that remains is an indestructible life. And though the process is painful, that is the life of true freedom…when all that’s left is what cannot be burnt up.
My life has been marked by instability, and so for many years these are the things I craved and in my very broken attempts, laboured to pursue…a sense of stability and security. Ironically since following the call of Jesus, I have found that what He has asked of me in faith and obedience has required me to embrace a life the world would regard as remarkably unstable...perhaps even a little unhinged. To be honest for a while I thought God cruel for this. Like “Lord, how could you after all I have faced?”. Yet what I have found is that in all that He has asked of me, He himself had to become my stability. I have had no choice but to cling desperately to the hem of His garment…only to find that it’s the only substance worth holding on to. If He had given me all these other things that I have craved in order to bring a sense of security to my life, they could all be lost or taken away in seconds. The truth is, He has given me the greater gift...a stability that cannot be moved.
In the narrow way, you must forsake all else, and He must become your all…your hope, your strength and your delight. And at that beautiful moment where HE truly has become your delight…no circumstance can steal it…and that my friends, is freedom.
You were never made to bear the weight of ruling your own life….you were created to live under Lordship (it's why idolatry is a thing). We humans have a love affair with control and we have been deceived into thinking that the measure of control we have is the measure of our freedom, when it is exactly the opposite. Last time I checked, children are the most free human beings of us all. Free from the weight of having to sustain their own life and decide their own fate. To live…they simply must obey. What I have learned is that obedience yolks us to his faithfulness like nothing else, and in doing so sets us free from the bondage and deception of self sufficiency…to bring us back to childlike faith and freedom. It is not insignificant that our saviour was a son given to obedience to His father…whose one call to action was "FOLLOW ME". He was bringing us back to our genesis where only HE determined what is indeed good. Lordship and obedience have been thrown in the proverbial swear jar even in modern Christianity and yet those are the very things that loose the chains of bondage off our lives. The only real way to find this freedom is to jump in the deep end without your floaties on and let him catch you.
I now have no other way forward than to keep in step with His spirit, I’m too far gone now. The boat I used to sit in has disappeared from sight….it’s either I sink, or set my face like flint and keep finding Him on the path in the waves. This is the thrilling path of liberty and freedom where the best efforts of my flesh no longer define the boundaries of my life. I know no better way to crucify the flesh than to obey when it seems utterly counter productive to sustaining life. It is in this process that we often find that the life we were trying so hard to sustain, wasn’t life at all.
To be on the threshing floor of the Lord, to be in His winepress is far better than being crushed by the world. Trust me, I've tried both. When our flesh is put to death, His spirit abounds. When we are crushed in His winepress, the aroma of Christ is released. The only way to become potent with His life, is to be purified by the process of obedience.
Being led by my faithful shepherd the past year has been the delight of my days (even though we certainly took the scenic route through the valley). My soul now grieves for those times that we have called Him Lord, but have given Him no Lordship…always waiting for the ram to run out of the thicket before we are willing to lift the knife over Isaac. Obedience is an act of faith and faith is our meeting place with God, our place of revelation without which we can never truly know Him. I want my life to be the substance of faith, not the substance of flesh…a life that places a demand on heaven because I have forsaken all else to make room for the margin of His glory.
See the Lord indeed does bring us out into a spacious place, if only we would take the narrow way. There is no overcoming without obedience and no crossing over without consecration.
I often find myself thinking back to the moment I surrendered all this before God, not understanding why He would ask such a thing. I laugh about it now. There I was, face in the carpet, staining it with tears…all I could feel in that moment was the hardness of what He was asking, when all along I was bowing down under the hand of His lavish kindness.
It is in the doorway of obedience we find ourselves hard pressed, but crushed against the rock of ages. This is the beautiful moment where we find He is ever faithful. And suddenly rock bottom never felt so good.
The narrow way leads to life and few find it…I’m truly grateful I have...and I encourage you to join me.