The Abdication of Self

Recently I read Luke 14:33 which says, “Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”  As I’m sure many other people have, I’ve struggled with this verse over the years.  It’s really hard to come to terms with the idea of giving everything away in order to follow Christ.  It’s always difficult to part with the stuff in my life.  What can I say; I’m human, and by my very nature I’m pretty materialistic.  I have an innate craving for comfort that’s hard to part with.

Today, though, I read this verse in a whole new light.  While I still believe that in some ways Jesus was talking about material things, I think he meant that following him means much more than that.  Jesus doesn’t want your stuff; he wants your heart.  He wants you.  When we come to Jesus it means we’ve come to the end of ourselves, and we’re ready to surrender all the things in our lives that have kept us from really knowing him fully.  Christ calls us to let go of our very selves so we can be filled with God’s very presence. 

Think about the things that make it hard for you to have a relationship with God.  Things like pride, selfishness, anger, worry, fear, and sin make it difficult, if not impossible, to know him.  In essence, it is our self that gets in the way.  The self is always concerned with being comfortable or seeking its own pleasure.  We often put the desires of the self on a pedestal, and in a certain sense we will do anything to get what we want.  When we follow the callings of our self we naturally slip into sin.  These are the things Christ is asking us to leave behind at the foot of the cross.  It’s like the scene in “Pilgrim’s Progress” when the character Christian leaves his burden of sin at Jesus’ feet and is finally free to walk with God.  In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus says, “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  We always tend to think in terms of giving up all the things we have that we want, but Jesus wants all the bad stuff in our lives that we hold on to.  He wants us to give him our sinfulness and our brokenness so he can make us whole.   

Meditating on this idea today has been absolutely freeing.  God has allowed me to have a way of peeling away all the awful things in my life and handing them over to him.  He’s allowed me to experience the freedom of forgiveness, and the joy of being given a fresh start.  And it’s not about giving him my nice house or my money.  It’s about giving him my whole heart.  Once you do that, nothing else even seems to matter!