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Surrendering the self
Since Resurrection Week programs are going on this week, it seems appropriate to consider the most commonly professed religion on the campus – Christianity.
Many of us have heard, “Jesus loves you and has a great plan for your life. You have a God-shaped hole in your heart that can only be filled by him. Pray this prayer and Jesus will give you love, joy, peace, fulfillment and happiness, etc.”
This is all true, but left by itself it is a half truth, preached by persons with either a misunderstanding of Biblical Christianity or who are too scared to preach the rest of the Gospel for fear that the congregation will high-tail it out of the building if they hear anything confrontational.
Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, God does have a great plan for your life. Yes, love, joy, peace, fulfillment and happiness are legitimate fruits of being “born-again.” But just praying a half-hearted prayer to test out this Jesus thing is not a legitimate acceptance of Jesus into your heart.
As a result of this preaching and the lukewarm converts it creates, there seems to be a prevalent idea in American Christianity that we can profess to follow Christ (making sure we come to church every once in a while as “fire insurance” to avoid hell), and yet still do the things we know God hates.
God isn’t interested in our church attendance record. He wants a personal relationship with every one of us, where we give Him total rule over our lives as our Lord. He wants to be allowed into the deepest parts of who we are – into our hearts. But this is a hard concept to accept.
We often hear that the Gospel is free – no strings attached. This is true. No amount of church services, volunteer projects, prayers or “good deeds” can get you into heaven. Jesus taking our sin on himself and paying for it by hanging on a cross and later declaring victory over death by rising from the dead three days later is not something we deserve – it is a free gift that we need only accept to experience. But accepting Jesus is like getting married.
Imagine going to the altar with your future spouse and at the end of the vows he or she adds in, “… until we get into any conflicts, we have to work through any problems or I decide to cheat on you. By the way, I’ve been sleeping with your best friend and I’m not planning on stopping anytime soon, so you’ll just have to accept that.”
When we come to Jesus half-heartedly, consciously hanging onto habits and ways of living that we know hurt him, we add caveats to our vow to him. We push him away, crucify him and reject him as the friend, father and lover he wants to be for us. We are hypocrites – saying we love Jesus, and yet hating Him with our actions.
Yes the Gospel is free, but in order to physically accept a gift, you have to empty your hands of whatever you are holding onto. If, after accepting the gift, you are still holding onto anything, you cannot get a total hold of what is being given to you and therefore miss out on experiencing the fullness of that gift.
This is why for so many, Christianity is boring. They never fully let go of their old lives, so they aren’t free to experience the full adventure of the Christian life. They are still chained down by old habits and old ways of thinking while striving for the promises of Christianity. Eventually they get worn out in the struggle, and collapse in exhaustion and boredom.
Jesus said, “none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his possessions.” (John 14:33)
Translation: To be a Christian, we have to give up all of our “rights” to ourselves, to our lives, to our dreams, to our sins, to everything we consider “ours” and give all of it over to God. We think we can somehow save ourselves – that we can eventually somehow “figure it out.” But to fully accept God’s free gift, we need to empty our hands of who we think we are, of everything we’ve believed or held to be true about ourselves so we can see who God made us to be and gain new understandings and visions of God, those around us and ourselves.
The thought of doing such a thing feels like committing suicide. This is what is meant by the Christian cliché of “dying to yourself;” handing everything over to God. The person you thought you were and your old habits have to die so God can resurrect those dreams in a purified form. Do this and you can experience the abundance and fullness of life that Jesus promises us.
What are you still holding onto from your past?