Letting It All Go ...

What is the chief priority of your life?  To answer that, you might consider what thing, activity, or even person it is, that you are most invested in.  Sometimes the answer might surprise you.  We get so involved in what we do, our routines, that we stop thinking about what is most important to us, and just go about life.  But take a step back from it, and think about it for a few minutes and the answer begins to emerge.  You would think that for Christians, the answer would always be Jesus.  But if you measured your answer against what you actually do with your time, it is hard to say Jesus and back it up with what you do.  Or if you measured your answer with love for others, it is hard to truly say, that outside of your immediate circle you truly love “all” others the way Jesus truly loves them.  Finally if you measured your answer against where you spend the bulk of your money – does Jesus truly emerge as your number one financial priority.  It is the routine that deceives us.  We love our spouse, sometimes with great passion, or our children and families, and think that our love for others is what Jesus intended – how could it not be.  We give our tithes and offerings faithfully to the church, and then think we have met the Lord’s requirements and so our financial “obligations” have been met.  Many other believers do not give at all, let alone systemically.  And as for time, we make time to go to church, or to watch it online, and once again consider ourselves “good” Christians as a result.  Again, many other believers don’t even go or watch at all.

But what if I told you that all those efforts, while a good start, are nowhere near enough?  It is not the beginning of being a Christian that is so condemning, it is that we let ourselves become fully satisfied with the beginning of Christianity and never take one step farther in it.  Once more, the devil knows all this.  The devil may not be able to prevent you from becoming a Christian, but the next best thing he can do, is get you to become fully complacent in your Christianity.  Cause you to focus on what you do for Jesus, not who you are inside.  Once you buy in to the argument that you are “good” enough, you shouldn’t need to try any more than that right?  I would offer, perhaps it is the “trying” that is the fundamental cause of the disconnect.  For as we “try” to be Christians, we begin to see the cost of being a Christian.  Our time spent on spiritual things is measured.  Our money given to ministry or the poor, is ever measured in order to satisfy what we think is “appropriate”.  And our love offered to spouses and children and families is thought to ever be enough.  But to “try” reveals one fundamental flaw, it is action of effort, not behavior that is natural to “who” you are.  Jesus is trying to change “who” you are, He is not focused on the actions, until the motives drive the behavior naturally.

There is a recipe for what it meant to follow Jesus, to be a true Christian.  It sounds harsh, but let us give it a second look and see if what we first read as harsh is not meant to be so.  Luke records the very words of Jesus Himself on this topic in his gospel letter to his friend on what we believe and why.  It begins in the fourteenth chapter picking up in verse 25 it reads … “And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them, [verse 26] If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”  Yikes.  Hate your mom and dad?  Hate your wife and kids?  Hate those you call brothers and sisters?  All this sounds way more like Satan talking that Jesus.  But Jesus does not end his list there, it continues to the main point of this passage.  We are to “hate” our own lives.  What does that mean?  I ask again, what, or who, is the chief priority of your life?  Go back and take a quick look at the Law, and you find to love God comes first.  How you love mankind comes second.  Why?  Because you cannot do the second half of the Law if you have neglected the first half.  To truly follow Jesus requires we let it all go.  It means we allow Jesus to transform “who” we are.  That is a very personal transformation.  And nothing else can be more important to us than that.  Not friends, or even family, but beyond both of those things, - not even ourselves.

Clinging to “who” you are right now, will be the death of you.  We come to like ourselves.  All the self help books in the world teach us to do this very thing.  Love yourself.  Do this before you can love others, or have a good life.  But here is Jesus saying – come to hate yourself.  Stop clinging to this person you are and valuing, the current you, at the cost of who you could be post the transformation Jesus longs to bring to you.  What needs to change in your life, is not a deeper love of self, but the total absence of it.  A willingness on your part to let your whole life go.  Let go those priorities you maintain today, for whatever priority Jesus lead you to.  Let go those relationships today if they stand in your way.  Especially the one of fondness for who you are as you sit today.  In truth you are not “good enough” today.  You are nowhere near as “good” as you need to be.  But way beyond that, you are nowhere near as “good” as you will become if you let Jesus run the “who” you are, and “who” you are yet to be.  The “trying” just fades away and is replaced by actions you are unaware of, even if the world around you cannot believe them with their own eyes.

The goal is not to truly hate mom.  But the priority must ever be Jesus first.  If I allow my relationship with mom to get in the way of Jesus first, I do mom a disservice, I destroy myself, and I cripple the transformation of me, that Jesus so longs to create in me.  Ultimately, for what I think is love for mom, becomes my undoing and hers.  Case in point, our first forefather Adam.  Adam let his perfect love for Eve, become more important to him, than a perfect love for God.  In so doing, he was undone, Eve was undone, and his perfect love was immediately corrupted by a new “love” that was ever aware of self-interests.  When Jesus comes for his evening walk with Adam and Eve, they hid from Him.  They were aware of their nudity.  They were ashamed of what they had done.  And when Adam is questioned about this, he does not recite a noble love of sacrifice for his beloved.  Instead he blames Eve for “making” him eat, it was her fault, not his.  Where was all the love for Eve then?  Tossed right out the window, in an effort to keep God from killing him on the spot.  Even though that would never be the plan of Jesus.  It is no different with you or I today.  We allow ourselves to claim that family is more important than Jesus to us in a pinch when things are desperate, and in so doing, we undo ourselves, and family we claim to love.  Better to hate who we are, and keep Jesus first, to give Him the clay of our lives to start over with.

Jesus continues in verse 27 saying … “And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.”  Yikes.  The analogy of serving Jesus compared to a torturous death that takes days to finally bring the end.  Not terribly appealing is it?  And here is where the rubber meets the road.  Who you are is not so willing to be transformed.  That love of self hangs on as if we would have to crucify it to get it out of here.  For days it struggles to find breath, maybe for years.  The carnal nature of 6000 years is deeply rooted in us, and is not inclined to go quietly.  Add to that the interest darker forces take in any person even glancing at Jesus to enact this kind of transformation and you get a perfect storm of self-love and self-interest trying desperately to avoid transformation and convince you that you just don’t need it.  And that is where most of Christianity just quits trying to let go, and settles in to a complacency about who they are, content to move this far and no farther.  But the cross is not an eternal torture device, it hurts more than anything, and then you die.  That is the hard part.  To truly be a disciple of Jesus, a follower of Jesus, the “who” we are today is destined to die.  No other way around it.  A hard truth, but a truth of hope beyond all imagining.

Jesus continues in verse 28 saying … “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? [verse 29] Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, [verse 30] Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.”  Here is Jesus Himself looking through the ages of time to a church of today, that is so content with itself.  We laid a foundation, we began through the faith of our forefathers, we rest on their accomplishments, and we move no farther.  And the devil, and the world, and our neighbors mock us saying that we have no real faith, for our lives look just like their lives, it is impossible to tell us apart, for we have no more love than they do, and we love all the same things.  We blend in so well, there is no distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian.  Worse, very often Christians are known for their condemnations and judgments of others.  Imagine that, what Jesus wanted was for the world to know us by our love.  And now they know us only by our judgment.  The church may be the greatest place for hate-speech the world has ever seen – not hate of sin, but hate of the sinners themselves.  For we offer them no plan of escape from lives burdened with pain of sin, just look at us, we have found no plan ourselves, how could we offer them one?  So we hate them instead of hating ourselves and who we have become.  The foundation was laid, but we have moved no farther.

Jesus continues in verse 31 saying … “Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? [verse 32] Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and desireth conditions of peace.”  We are at war today.  Not war with a physical enemy, or even war with a virus we do not see.  We are at war with ourselves, with who we are, and who Jesus longs to re-create us into, with whether we will allow Him to change us that way, or not.  But here is where hope begins to emerge once again.  Jesus tells us we are outnumbered.  Jesus tells us, it is time to find peace, to surrender and suffer no more.  On the other side of peace is a life waiting for you like no other.  On the other side of death to who you are today, is a new creation that has no limits.  The best life you can imagine is not enough to describe what Jesus first will create in you.  The conditions of this world cannot touch it.  And the conditions of the world to come, will be once again beyond all imagining.

Jesus concludes this section beginning in verse 33 saying … “So likewise, whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple.  [verse 34] Salt is good: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be seasoned? [verse 35] It is neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill; but men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”  Letting it all go.  Leaving it all behind.  To seek Jesus first, God first.  To turn yourself over to Jesus entirely no matter the outcome, no matter who you will become, who He will make you into.  This is what it means to be a disciple, to be a follower of Jesus.  It may someday mean you are poor, perhaps dirt poor.  Not because you did not have money, but because you gave it all away without so much as a second thought or single regret.  You long only for the opportunity to give more.  It may someday mean, you are divorced, or isolated from your entire family for the strength of your love for Jesus.  But in that passion, your family may bear witness to who you have become, and your ever-present love for them, grounded in Jesus.  It may be that your entire family seeks the same Lord to find that kind of love for themselves.  And in being willing to let them go for the sake of Christ, that they are all brought to the feet of Christ and saved for themselves.  If Adam had been willing to let Eve go, and trust her to the love of Jesus, humanity would have had a very different fate, and Eve would still not have been lost forever.

But lest you think what the church is today, is enough, examine the analogy of salt losing its savor.  You can’t fix that.  You can’t make it better.  It becomes useless.  It becomes a church made of people who carry the name of Christ, but cling to everything in their lives but Jesus.  And in so doing, the world is not led to Jesus, but instead led away from Him.  The image of a condemning God is maintained by a people more prepared and willing to condemn others than to love them unconditionally.  A Jesus-first-church, is willing to let their entire lives go, and find themselves made into something else, something better.  A Jesus-first-church begins to think of the salvation of others, not by pointing out yet more attention to their sins, but by loving them first while they are yet in their sins, and then pointing them to Jesus for relief from the pain of their sins by the quiet example of their own lives.  No condemnation ever need be spoken, the world is not searching for yet another condemnation of itself.  But the world is desperately looking for a love that does not fail, and gives it reason to seek change, to seek a better way.  If we offer no better way in the example of our own lives and love, then we are salt that is no longer a seasoning of flavor, but just empty granules of nothing.

To let it all go sounds like sacrifice from this point of view.  But across the transformation horizon it is the deal of the century.  It is the letting go of our pain, for His joy.  It is the letting go of our self-inflicted stress and worry for His peace that nothing can touch.  It is the letting go of what we call love, for a pure love that comes from the throne of heaven itself and is reflected through you, without self-interest, but with only genuine care for another, for any other, whether sinner or saint.  And the un-healed cancer patient facing death can see this transformation in their own mind and hearts, and wind up living every moment from now to the grave in a state the world cannot ever know.  Each moment of life being made precious by a ministry for others, even though the disease never leaves, even if it kills them.  This world is but an introduction to a far better one.  And finding Jesus here is all that matters, it is all that makes life worth living, it is the meaning of life itself.  Letting it all go, means putting what matters most to you, in that hands of a loving Savior.  It means trusting God with your wife, your kids, your family, your job, and your money.  For it will only be as Jesus transforms you, that you may ever be able to reach those you love, to truly minister unto them.  And that is all that matters.  It begins, as you let it all go, but it has no end, ever better, ever more.