Who Are You Willing To Die For?
John 15:12-14 Amplified Bible (AMP)
12This is My commandment: that you love one another [just] as I have loved you. 13No one has greater love [no one has shown stronger affection] than to lay down (give up) his own life for his friends. 14You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do.
On Friday, I was compelled to share some deep feelings of gratitude with those who had really shown me love, sacrifice, compassion, unyielding friendship and nonjudgmental during this time in my life. Many of these individuals with whom I shared this message, placed their lives, issues, problems and circumstances on hold to be there for me. They died to their own needs, self-indulgences, and everyday needs to ensure my safety and that I made it through this time of wrestling with God and one of the most major transitions in my life. It was during this time, that many things came out not just about them, but about me as well. One of my sista/friends said this is a time she should have been ministering to me, and here I was encouraging and speaking into her life. But many of them rearranged their lives, schedules and many other things for me and my family. They were willing to die to their lives and even their lifestyles for me and mine.
Yesterday as I pondered all of this I began to say, who I am willing to die for? You see there have been many times in my life I have died for the wrong people, I gave up, sowed into and laid down my life for people that were willing to just let me give up all for them, while they kept doing them and living for them. But I see now that giving up my life is something that I do for God alone, when I say that, that does not mean that I never do anything for people, that is further from the truth, because in my lying down my life for Him I am not lead by my flesh, my position, what I have or don’t have, what I am feeling or not feeling; it is solely based on His will for my life and those individuals that are my assignment to care for and to lay down my life for. You see many of us struggle with doing for others, or doing the right things by other people even when they are in our assigned scope of reference because we are not willing to die for the cause of Christ. I am not necessarily speaking of a natural death, but a death to our flesh. Many of us have adopted attitudes, stances and perspectives that have hardened us, because people have not responded to us as we have perceived they should have or we were hurt by their actions, because we had an expectation that they would do for us, what we have done for them, or that they would respond to us in a manner that was befitting us. Dying to self for the glorification of God includes purification and being purified often means having things cut out of us, burned out us, and unfortunately even crushed out of us. For many of us, pain, is not an option for us, and that means dying, even for God is not an option, because we want what we want without having to sacrifice. We want to be in the will of God, but we want it under our guidelines, and control not His. I remember when I was a disciplined fitness nut. When I began to study the process of building muscle I discovered something very interesting, you can never build a muscle until it is first, torn and ripped, even shredded, it is in the healing, restorative and resurrective process of the muscle that it is built. Many of us only want the life, without the death.
Unless a seed fall to the ground and die, fruit, flowers, trees, or any type of vegetation cannot grow and begin to produce new life. The question we need to ask is who are willing to die for. Where our treasure is that is where our heart is. Where we are willing to sacrifice and what we are willing to give up for is where we will find that we place the most value. Who do you value enough to give up your life for? For their truly is not life without a death first.
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