Do you love God more than anything? And do you surrender to Jesus daily? Your will, your strength, your heart, your mind, your body, your soul, your spirit, your everything? That is a tall order, isn’t it? Are you truly willing to give up your own children, even your own life, to follow Jesus? Because that is what he expects you to do. Are you ready to give up everything to follow Jesus?

With the words of Jesus: Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple. (Luke 14:33, MSG)

Do you give up everything to follow Jesus?

This is for real. Following Jesus is much more radical than we’d like it to be. How convenient it’d be to get all the benefits and not give up anything, right? But that’s not how it works. Jesus gives us everything we can’t have on our own: freedom from sin, peace everlasting, a direct access to God, his holiness, unlimited joy, unconditional love and so on. We can’t earn any of it. We can only receive it by grace.

Grace is free but it’s not cheap. First of all, grace cost Jesus his life and second, we are bid to die when we come to Christ. It costs our life and everything that is dear to us. That is the only way to be a follower of Christ. How about you? Are you willing to give up everything to follow Jesus? Not just once. But daily. All your plans, all your loved ones, all your money, all your life.

What is your answer?

It’s not an easy answer. And sometimes we’d like to change it especially when we don’t like what God is asking us to do. But we can be certain that we will never be short-changed when we deal with God. Because he loves us. He wants what’s best for us. But it can be scary to surrender everything to God. Because then we are not free to do whatever we want to do but we are yoked to follow Christ wherever he leads us. But we can be certain it will always pay off to surrender our dearest to God. Most often God gives them right back to us (just like Abraham got Isaac back).

Surrendering our freedom goes against our (Western?) sensibilities. We want to be independent and free no matter what. But that’s not God’s way. We can only be truly free in Christ. That’s the paradox of faith which we can only understand with the help of the Holy Spirit. Surrendering our egos and giving up everything to follow Christ is the most life-giving thing we can ever do. So let’s get right to it!

 

Gracious God,
We want to be truly yours because we are not truly living without you.
You have the words of life, the keys to peace and freedom, the secret of joy.
So we surrender our body, soul, spirit, heart, mind, will, and strength to you.
We give up our loved ones, our desires, and our plans, our very own lives to follow Jesus.
Make us true followers of Christ.
In Jesus’ precious name,
Amen

Q4U: Are you ready to give up everything to follow Jesus?

Be blessed my fellow pilgrim as you surrender your everything to follow Jesus!

Photo by Ester Marie Doysabas on Unsplash, design by Mari-Anna Stålnacke. I am linking up with Unite the Bloggersphere and #tellhisstory.