Then he said to them all: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” Luke 9:23-25 (NIV)
God desires the shattering of the self-will. He wants us stripped of our self-reliance and independence from Him as well as of our placing great confidence in the flesh. This is for our best as there is always an emptiness in the so-called self-sufficiency. Besides this, Jesus told us that apart from Him we could do nothing of eternal value. Paul poses to us the same question he asked the Corinthians: “What do you have that you did not receive?” It’s all His – even the air we breathe with the lungs He has made. John Flavel writes: “The greatest difficulty in conversion is to win the heart to God; and the greatest difficulty after conversion is to keep the heart with God.” As the heart goes so does the person. A surrendered heart, stripped of all self-reliance and pride is the heart God can greatly use. He will not own mere fleshly works. We must be resolute in our endeavor of going forth in the strength of the indwelling Holy Spirit’s power. It is the way to take hold of the life that is truly life.
Jesus came to this earth to restore us spiritually. He first opens our eyes (and our hearts) to the sin within and our need for healing. His great desire is to bring restoration to our weary bound, sin-sick souls ultimately saving us from the trackless waste we are wandering in. He did not only present to us our problem, but He also offered to us our solution for it as He continues to do to all who do not know Him. He was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of the One that would be the Savior of the world and He does it through His power and for His glory and for our good. Faith looks away from self to God. We are not our own, we have been bought with a high price and we are to honor God with our bodies. The death of wintertime is necessary for the resurrection of springtime and, as Jesus said in John 12:24-26: “I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.”
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:7-10 (NIV)