Obedience Kills Me- THE OBIT CHALLENGE

Matt 16:24-26 “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” 

When we allow Jesus to not only be our Savior, but also our Lord, we have to crucify ourselves daily. We have to do as John prayed and decrease so He (Jesus) must increase. This is the first step to submission. 

How do we “Crucify” ourselves? We OBEY. 

Obedience to God is counter-intuitive to the ways of a man. 

The Bible says there is a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads to death. Since God’s ways lead to life, we must chose to do the thing that seems unrealistic in today’s world in order to obey what God has said. 

So how do we know what God has said? We learn to hear God by learning how God speaks. The way we learn how God talks is by reading the Bible. 

The Bible is just recorded conversations between God and many ordinary, everyday, walking around in the flesh, imperfect men and women. 

The only one who was perfect was Him. So as we read, the word begins to imprint itself on our hearts, and we begin to see that God’s faithfulness and love for us prompts us to want to please Him. It prompts us to obey. 

God’s mercy is new every morning and so too must be our commitment to place Him first in our lives. 

The bills cannot come first, the pursuit of fun cannot come first, and neither can the pursuit of study or a career. Our priorities must reflect God’s standard. 

We must figure out once and for all the chicken or the egg order of our lives. 

You know what I mean. What came first- the chicken or the egg? Well, the Bible says on the fifth day He created the birds, THEN He told them to multiply. 

So what comes first with us? What comes second? And so on and so on? 

I believe it is this: 

God (No other gods before Him) 

Your Spouse (Leave and cleave) 

Your children (Training a child is a full time ministry and a joyful responsibility) 

Your ministry (Your purpose is multi-layered and this may bleed over, but do not sacrifice family for it) 

Your career and all the rest (eat to live, don’t live to eat mentality) 

We must always place God first, with nothing between Him and us. We must sacrifice our wants, our desires, our needs and do what God calls us to. 

He calls us to love Him with all our heart, our mind, and our body. He wants us to serve our fellow man, just as we would serve ourselves. When we do this, we live the life He designed for us – a life of obedience. 

As we obey, as we serve others, we ourselves get less important. 

We have to wake up, especially as Americans, because we have served ourselves for too long! We have lost focus on what it means to love others, to feed the widow and the orphan, and to help in times of want, not just times of plenty! 

We have been the “I’m okay, you’re okay” generation, the “me” generation, the “x” generation and the “Y” generation. I want to know why we are leaving out our fellow man? Why have we failed to obey this commandment: SERVE ONE ANOTHER? 

So this brings me to THE OBIT CHALLENGE. I want to stop living just for me. I want to be all God wants me to be. I cannot do that in my “self”, but I have to do that in Him. I have to lay down my life. I have to pick up the life God calls me to, and I have to do this daily! 

I have written my daily spiritual obit. I want to challenge you to write yours. It does not have to be long. It can be a sentence or two. The point is to have a definitive moment where you choose obedience to Christ over yourself. Let obedience kill you. Let God resurrect a new you and a new life in Him. 

So share your obit below and we will rejoice with you, not mourn, because “a man who lays down his life WILL gain it”

Worried? Think you can't do it? Okay, I will go first: 

HERE LIES Dayna Bickham, age 38. She leaves behind her old self: the one who cared little to nothing for others, who always needed to be admired, feared, and knew better than everyone.

She died of self-inflicted wounds because today she crucified her flesh, she laid down her “self” and she took up the cross.

She surrendered her pride, her reputation, and her hard demeanor. She laid it all on the line, she laid it all at the feet of Jesus.

                  She denied her anger.

                  She denied her offense.

                  She denied her over-inflated 

                  sense of fair.

 

Instead she focused on peace, she chose love and she allowed God to go to battle on her behalf. 

Today, she has no power. She is dead.

Tomorrow, hopefully, she will do it all over again. 

Okay- Your turn.