“I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now live in the body I live by faith in (by adherence to and reliance on and complete trust in) the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

Are you living the crucified life that you ought? Before you answer, keep in mind that If you have received Christ as Lord and Savior, then you’ve agreed to climb up on Christ’s Cross and be crucified with Him…

So, with that in mind, I’ll ask again: Are you living life dead to self and alive to Christ?

Those questions hit me like a thunder bolt! Jolting me out of my familiar mid-week leaning-in posture—causing me to sit straight up in Holy Ghost conviction!

Crucifixion. Not your typical topic of conversation. It conjures up images of unimaginable brutality and unthinkable cruelty. Yet, in the case of Jesus, though brutal yes, this unthinkable act was voluntary. The high-point of His coming into this world was to die for it.

And so should it be for us as well if we claim to know Jesus as Lord and Savior…

It was for Esam, an Iraq Christian, who, after 5 hours of torture, after being brutally beaten, was crucified by Isis in front of his wife and children. Why? When He was told to deny Jesus he refused. And so he was told, “If you will not deny this dog, this Jesus, then you will die like Him.” And he did.

Esam was crucified…

Was he afraid? I’m sure he was. Yet his love for Jesus, that promise he made that his life was no longer his own, strengthened him, giving him the grace necessary to surrender it all to God. “And they have overcome (conquered) him by means of the blood of the Lamb and by the utterance of their testimony, for they did not love and cling to life even when faced with death [holding their lives cheap till they had to die for their witnessing]” Revelation 12:11

Overcome: To subdue, over-power, to conquer. “Living your life unafraid to die for Christ’s sake empowers you to truly live your life for Him. Because to live is Christ and so too, to die…

I knew God had just said, Now that I have your full attention, this is where—the direction in which, I’m calling you. Follow me.

I recognized in an instant I was being sent back to the Cross—yet again. But my death, (unlike Jesus’s, unlike Esam’s), was purely spiritual; it’s dying daily to all my little gods. To straining the gray from my life, ridding it of lukewarmness, of me-ism’s, my death, my personal choice to lay down my life, to be crucified with Him, remains an ongoing process…

From my familiar seat, in familiar surroundings, I could hear too, the familiar steely echo of the hammer striking archetypal nails.

Loving God is meant to cost you. Serving God means understanding dichotomy—seeming contradictions. Dying to live. Giving to receive. Emptying yourself to be filled. In other words, thinking as God thinks, not as the world around you think…

The Pastor asked the above questions last night. He was unpacking his message and talking about how God had rebuked the Pharisees concerning their faithful—yes faithful, letter of the law tithing.

How Jesus chided them for having failed in true giving because what they had given was incomplete. Because when it came to the heart of their giving Jesus wanted more (Matthew 23:23). He wanted, wants, hearts that are generous in giving everything. Like Esam’s. Hearts, like His own, willing to give it all. Hearts lavish in showing mercy, open-handed in trust—in faith believing, princely in demonstrating love, kindness, and compassion. A heart that’s fair and just. One that uses the same scales to weigh another’s sins and short-comings as it does its own. A heart willing to die to its wants to please, build up, support, encourage, comfort, give, seek the best for, another. One that would rather die than to break his commitment to live for God…

Not one that is tight-fisted. Giving only what the law requires, says must be given—and not one thing more.

That’s when I thought  to myself what I believe we’ve all said to ourselves or aloud, at some point—if we’re Christians. My giving is pure, joyful, a privilege. I’ve been crucified with Christ; my life is no longer my own. That it is Christ who lives in me...

And I know that if you, like myself, love God, and have said this, you too have meant it—mean it, when you say it. I know I do. But do I, do we, mean it to the point of death?  Like Esam? Or do we mean it like the Pharisees meant it, giving what is required by the law but no more?

Do we mean it even when it costs us—because it will.

It will cost us because—love is, after all, sacrificial…

Something must go—must be given up, over to, surrendered, put to death. Over, and over, and, over again. For however long that love, that relationship lasts—else it will die—rot, dry up, from selfishness—from an overdose of; “But what about me….?”

The Pastor went on to point out how as new Christians, we take pride in our Christian-ness. In being able to quote a few Scriptures, serve on a ministry team, have our faces—better still, our names known by our fellow Christians, our pastor,  Christian 101. The alpha of our salvation. He then went on to point out the B’s and C’s of the Christian experience. He finished his teaching with an example of the more mature Christian. The one that has been through some battles, suffered seemingly unbearable loss, having some scars to show for their years—having carved out circles in midnight rugs as they battled in prayer—contending. Has spent time in the refiners finer—finding themselves prostrate on the floor—in tears of gratitude, or repentance. Who knows this walk—their strengths and abilities, have nothing to do with self and everything to do with God. That in truth, they’ve yet to scratch the surface of knowing their unplumbed God…

But they want to—they strive to, will give anything—to know Him more.

He’s all they have—all I have.

Hence the ongoing deaths—our love for Him drives us back to His Cross…

Love requires that we give everything, not simply what the law requires.

Love is sacrificial…

It drives us back to the hammering and the nails that recommit us—to our sacrificial life’s work—death to self and life in Christ. And, for as long as we live in these tents of flesh they’re necessary— the hammer and the nails, those cyclical trips to the Cross—they’re air and water necessary to our souls. Only Jesus died once for all—we are not Him…

Though He lives in us and through us, we, unlike Him, are not yet perfected as He is perfected.

I was jarred when the Pastor asked those questions of us—of me. My answer, ashamedly—honestly, was no.

No, I’m not wholly living my life-like I had crawled up on His Cross and died. I leave far too much room for myself—my wants, thinking, and abilities. Though I want to, strive to, and at times do give it all—I am non-the-less selfish. My flesh wins out far too often in its ongoing war with my Spirit. And it is here, in this knowledge, in my weakness that I was reminded I have a Father who knew how selfish, imperfect, and flawed I was when He called me to be His own. It’s why He sent Jesus into my pig-pen, to wrap a cloak around me, to put His signet ring on my finger, and to prepare a feast—and a permanent place for me…

So then, I will not, must not, allow the enemy of my soul to condemn me for something God has sent His Only Son to free me from. Though God lovingly convicts me that I may grow in Him, though He demands that I relinquish what does not reflect Him to the world around me, I do not stand condemned before Him.  Why? The finished work of Jesus has redeemed me—His Life, His death, and His resurrection.

Jesus did for me—for you, for the whole of the world, what we could not do for ourselves. His perfect—spotless, sacrificial death, His Blood—if received by us, by anyone, reinstate us to right relationship with Father God.

But as I’ve said from the outset of this message—Loving God will cost you, because true love, at its core, is sacrificial.

It always seeks what’s best for its beloved. It serves—first, loves, first, gives, first, forgives, first, encourages, comes-up alongside of, lays down the right to, thinks of other before self…first.

True love is the mirror image of God’s love for us turned out toward the world—towards each other…

Hence our need, my need to return to that Cross—His Cross, my Highest example of what death to self is Truly all about. That I might, unlike the Pharisees Jesus chastised, learn to give God my all. My very best. Those things that cost me to give…

For God so loved the world that He gave, His only Son—so that I might, we might, know Him, and through that knowing be transformed into His image. And continue as vessels that bring—carry life, to the world as He did.

Like Father—like daughter/son.

My brother, my sister, if you claim to know Him, to have received Him—His Spirit, I’ll ask of you what was asked of me, what convicted me.

Are you living as though you had climbed up on Christ’s Cross and been crucified with Him? Are you living your life dead to self? Or are you living the way of the Pharisees? Giving some, but not all, to God? I urge you to pray to the Lord that He may show you where you need to lay “self” down.

I pray your strength as I pray my own…

And, if you don’t yet know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, today is the acceptable day, now—right now, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, stop. Just stop. Ask Jesus into your heart now—and mean it, He will come…

“But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with your heart you believe and are justified, and with your mouth you confess and are saved” (Romans 10: 8-10; emphasis added).