We were made in the image of God. From the beginning, He intended for us to be like Him, so that we could spread His glory throughout the earth. He created all of us to serve a specific purpose, one that calls us from within. And we go through life searching for it, but we wind up empty handed. We find ourselves in a state of emptiness that stems from living in this broken world. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. His creation was perfect; His word says that all was good. But a choice in the garden led to the fall of mankind. And ever since, our lives have been affected by history. But through the grace of God, we have been given the opportunity to have a fresh start. Our Savior died for us; He suffered so that we would not live our lives under the curse of humanity. He died and rose from the dead so that we could be raised back to life—the life that He intends for us. Through His sacrifice, we have the opportunity to see the plan of God manifested in our lives. We have the opportunity to leave the past behind, we have the ability to be made new.
This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT)
When we hear this scripture we rejoice, but we fail to understand that our receiving of this new life comes at a cost—losing our old life. We can not have both; it is one or the other. Our heavenly Father puts before us a choice, life or death, and even when we choose life, we have to die to our old self. We have to bury who we are, so that we can become who He created us to be.
Think about Jesus, as He sacrificed His life for all of humanity. He came into the earth knowing what His purpose was. He had all the details. He knew that He would rise again, but that fact didn’t make the process any easier for Him. He would have to experience this death, so that He could bring about new life.
From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. (Matthew 16:21 NLT)
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. (Matthew 16:24-25 NLT)
Jesus told us that we would have to follow His lead. He said that the only way to gain our life is to give up our life. I know this seems counter-intuitive, but we must understand that we can not live the life that God has for us outside of Him. Apart from a relationship with Him, we live lives that we’ve built up for ourselves. And we either become a product of our environment, or a product of who we’ve always wanted to be. But neither of these reflects the life that God has planned for us. There is no way for us to think ourselves into the will of God. His will only comes by grace, through faith in Him.
New life only comes after the death of our old life.
This is literally what Jesus was saying. We have to go through what He went through, if we want to follow Him. And it wasn’t pretty. And I think that this is the problem, the big misconception about being a follower of Christ. That it will be pretty. That it will be glorious, because His life is glorious. But that is only half the story. We celebrate His resurrection, but we brush past His death. We brush past the sorrow that He had to endure. We brush past the fact that death had to happen before life. This was the only way.
He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Matthew 26:39 NLT)
Many of us know this story so well, because we’ve heard it so many times. But imagine Jesus in the garden. In sorrow as He prepared for His assignment. He asked His Father if there was any other way, and then, as He was strengthened by the Spirit, He remembered the purpose of it all. He remembered each one of us; He saw us in our brokenness, and He knew that this was the only way to break the curse on our lives. He knew that this was the only way to redeem us, so that we could have new life in Him. His sacrifice is our road map. He’s shown us the way.
We say we want God’s will for our lives, but most of us have no idea what we are signing up for. But He knows full well what it will take to breathe new life into us. He knows that He must crucify the person that we have become, so that we can be who He’s called us to be. This is how we are born again. I know it doesn’t sound pretty, but neither does hanging on a cross, and if we are to share in His glory, we must also share in His suffering.
And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. (Romans 8:17 NLT)
My season of interceding for my husband and marriage was the hardest thing that I’ve ever been through. And it wasn’t just because I had to wait on God. It was because I had to die to myself daily. I had to pick up my cross, and crucify my desires, so that I could gain God’s plan for my life. During that season, God spoke to me about who I had become, and He showed me that I was not living the life that He had planned for me. He told me that His plan was so much better than my own. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to live in the will of God. I wanted to see His plan and purpose for my life, but I didn’t know that the path would be through my pain, and through the darkest season that I would ever experience. He put me through the fire; He sifted me. He tore down the ideals that I had adopted. He changed my perspective of myself, and my perspective of my husband and my family. He completely tore down who I thought I was. He broke down the walls that I had built up, through all the hurt. He corrected me, despite the pain. There were so many times that I tried to point the finger at my husband, but God said, “Nope, I want to focus on you instead.” And that hurt. It was hard to accept the things going on around me, and realize that there was nothing that I could do about it. Not only was the situation out of my control, but God would specifically tell me to keep my hands off of it. I felt like I was being tortured, unable to defend myself. But as I ran to God with each hurt, he strengthened me. Little by little, he used that hurt to mold me into who I am today.
Through that season of darkness, God laid to rest the person that I used to be. That person was self-righteous, but He has shown me that I need His grace just as much as anyone else. The old me was unforgiving, but because He forgave my sins, I can forgive freely. The person that I used to be desired perfection from myself and others, but He’s shown me that He alone is perfect. He’s shown me that my strength comes from my weakness, and He has given me the ability to say the same for others. He has shown me the beauty in me, and He’s given me the grace to see the beauty in others. I am not the same. I have been born again, but it happened only after I allowed Him to walk me through a season of darkness.
We must go through the dark in order to see the light.
He brings us to these seasons that feel dark, where we can’t see the light. And often times, we feel like this can’t be God. How can the God of light lead us into the dark? But I want us to view this through the lens of new life. What happens when we want to grow a new plant? We put the seed in the ground, into darkness. Why? Because if we are to see a beautiful plant later on, it must first have time to grow roots that it needs to sustain life. And it is the same for us. God wants to give us new life, but first, He has to put us in a place where we can grow the roots that are necessary to sustain life. God uses the darkness to purify us and mold us into who He created us to be. He uses darkness to build the endurance that we need to walk in our calling. He uses darkness to teach us who our healer, provider, and sustainer is. These are our roots—the qualities that we need to walk in purpose.
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. (Romans 5:3-4 NLT)
This is how God builds our character. Character isn’t built on the mountaintop, or in the light. It’s built in the valley, in the darkness of disappointment and sorrow. He only wants what’s best for us. He wants us to receive the life that He has for us; but first, He has to make sure that we are ready for it. He has to purify us, and remove the impurities of our flesh. Because without this purifying process, we can not sustain the glory that He wants to shine through our lives.
“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the wine would burst the wineskins, and the wine and the skins would both be lost. New wine calls for new wineskins.” (Mark 2:22 NLT)
In this passage, Jesus is responding to a group of people that questioned His methods. They asked Him why He was doing things differently than everyone else.
Once when John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, some people came to Jesus and asked, “Why don’t your disciples fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees do?” (Mark 2:18 NLT)
And as Jesus responds, He basically tells them that He came to do a new thing. And that no one puts new wine into old wineskins, because the old wineskin isn’t equipped to handle the new wine. And I believe that this is what He speaks to us. We want the new wine, the new blessings, the fresh start, but we are trying to fit all of this into old wineskins. But He says that our old wineskin, our old life, our old perspective, our old ideas, can not sustain what He wants to do in us. He needs us to start fresh. And we do this by going through a season of purification with Him.
Purification is a process.
We will go through seasons of intense purification with God, where He completely flips our world upside down, but this process in never over. He’s always refining us. He’s always sifting us. He renews our minds continually. He is never finished with us.
And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. (Philippians 1:6 NLT)
God always finishes what He starts.
His word says that He is faithful to complete every good work that He begins in us. This is a promise that we can hold on to. So, when we are in the middle of the pit of waiting on Him, we can rest in His faithfulness. He is good—always, and He has good things planned for us—always. Even in the darkest seasons of our lives. So yes, He allows us to experience death in some areas, but that is only so that we can experience the resurrection of Christ! God always uses the bad for our good—so that we can receive the life that He has for us. This is our prize. This is when He reveals His glory to us. These are the seasons when we have the opportunity to gain the knowledge of who He is.
I have been raised to life; my family has been raised to life. But it was only possible through death. It was only possible because we said yes to Him, and we allowed Him to kill everything that came between us and the plan of God for our lives. And He isn’t done. He has so much more refining to do in us, and He has so much more in store for us. This is our testimony. But the thing is, that we can only experience life to the point that we are willing to experience death. This is so powerful. Because if we think about it, we serve a limitless God. A God of abundance. But He will only do what we allow Him to do. So as we relinquish each area of our lives to Him, He will reveal more of His glory to us.
So maybe you’ve prayed, and you’ve asked God to do a new thing in you. You’re tired of the life that you’ve fashioned for yourself, and you’ve declared that you will lay down your way, to walk in the will of God. But now, you find yourself in a place of darkness. It feels like the rug has been pulled from under you. You have no idea how you got in the space that you’re in. And maybe you feel like you are worse off than before. And all of this is making you question if God is with you, and whether or not His favor is for you. If that is you, I want to tell you that you are right where He wants you. I know that may be hard to understand, and hard to reconcile with your current circumstances, but I promise that He uses the most difficult seasons to purify us. He removes anything that is not in His original plan for our lives. He strips all of that away, and then He build us back up in His perfect will for us. It is difficult, it may be the hardest thing that you have ever endured, but if you will trust God, I promise that He will reveal His glory to you. He will resurrect you from the ashes, so that you can experience the glory of Christ. Never forget that you are a child of God, and this is your inheritance. You will have a testimony that points back to Him. Your story will be the proof of who He is. And that is His purpose for you, to shine your light in this world of darkness. He has already begun a new work inside of you, and He will be faithful to complete it. So, stay planted, wait on Him, and allow Him to raise you back to life.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for sending your Son to die on the cross for me. His sacrifice washed away my sins; He purified me so that I can be reconciled to you. Through your grace, I have been born again. I have been given a new life. But I know that this is a process, and I know that as I relinquish my old life, I will receive the free gift of a new life in You. So today, I declare that I want what you want for me. I declare that I am laying down my wants, desires, ideals, perceptions…my way of life. And I know that the life that you have for me is so much better. But as I embark on this process, I need your strength. I need you to send your Spirit to comfort me in my moments of sadness. And I know that even in my toughest moments, you are good, and you will use everything for my good. I am confident that through this journey, I will receive the victory that Christ Jesus already won for me. I praise you in advance for the miracles that you are working beneath the surface, because I know that you always finish what you start. I give you the glory for raising me back to life. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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