Are We Dead Yet?

Phil 1:18-21

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help given by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance.   I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Between the giving of the promise and the fulfillment of that promise there is always a desert.

In 1972 the Lord called me to the ministry and gave me a promise.  He promised me He would make me a pastor.  He neglected to tell me that it would take the rest of my life for Him to fulfill that promise.  As a brash, foolish young man I thought all I had to do was go to school, get ordained and become a pastor. It only took me 6 years until 1978 to graduate from college and it only took 19 more years to get ordained.  I was confused.  When I received my promise it all seemed so immediate.  It has taken God close to 30 years for Him to teach me that I bring nothing to the equation.  In fact, in order for the promise to be fulfilled I have to die to all that I am, all that I have.  He would have to develop character in me; patience in me; compassion in me; a fully yielded man in me.  I did all the right things and it wasn’t enough.  In fact, the more I did, the further away I got from the fulfillment of the promise.

The spiritually immature become filled with ambition as they try to make God’ promises come to pass.

God had given me a promise and I sought to make it happen by doing all the right things.  I was going to be a man of God.  I was going to develop myself into a good preacher.  I was going to learn about church administration and church growth and then put those things into action so that I could grow a big church for God.  I wanted to do great things for God.

James 3:16

For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.

Ambition comes when we try to accomplish the will of God through the strength of man.

We want to build something that is pleasing to God and that will bring some recognition to ourselves as the ones who did it.  We want a breakthrough that we can put into a formula and then show others how we did it.  God wants us to be broken.  God wants us to die.  Ambition causes us to focus on the promise and its fulfillment rather than on the giver of the promise.  We end up doing Godly things in our own strength and by doing so we make them ungodly because their origin and their source is in us instead of in Christ.  What has God promised you that you are trying to make it come to pass.

We look for a crown, but Jesus points to the cross

Matt 20:25-28

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Becoming a minister means to take on mantle on Christ who served all and died for all.  It is not a manner of position or rank, it is about relationship and submission.

Ministry is a call, not to lead but to die.

Luke 9:23-24

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 happens when we carry a cross?  Carrying a cross is the only way to kill off ambition.  Carrying a cross keeps us humble.  Carrying a cross keeps us weak.  Carrying a cross makes us dependent on others.  Carrying a cross reminds us that we have to die.  Carrying a cross reminds us that we have nothing to offer except Christ and Him crucified.

What we see as problems, God sees as opportunities for us to die so that His character might be formed in us.

Dead people don’t get offended.  I we get offended it is because we are not dead yet.  When an offense comes your have a choice; you can pick up the offense or you can pick up the cross.  How do you know the difference?  Simple, you have picked up the offense if when you look at the past you remember more clearly how people hurt you than how God delivered you.  You have picked up the cross when you look at the offense as an opportunity to take on Christ’s character and forgive and grow in love.

Things happen all the time that throw us off-stride. I been battling with depression and navel gazing for the past couple of months. What are you struggling with? What does it mean?  We aren’t dead enough.  We still focus on distractions, we still get rattled when the enemy attacks, we still fall back on our own wisdom and experience and we plow through when we ought to stop and pray and allow God to take control.  We failed a test but we learned a lesson.  A battle was lost but the victory was still God’s because we asked Him to teach us and we died a little more.

God’s promises are not a destination; they are a journey.

You have heard me say on occasion that the joy is in the journey.  We get obsessed with destinations because we think that all the work will be done when get there.  Have you ever taken kids on a long trip?  If you have, then you know that every five minutes one of them is going to say, “Are we there yet?”.  You want them to enjoy the trip and look at all the pretty scenery but they won’t have any of it.  They are bored and they just want to get there.  We are the same way.  We get tired of working, tired of the daily grind, tired of the trials.  We want to get to a place in which we can feel like we have arrived, where we feel that we have accomplished something.  Instead we are faced with an endless journey.  Instead of asking, “Are we there yet”, we ought to be asking “Are we dead yet?”.  The Apostle Paul knew that.  That is why he said;

1 Cor 15:31

 I die every day-I mean that, brothers-just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Dead man walking

On death row they have a saying when a condemned man makes his last walk on the way to be executed.  The guards announce, “Dead man walking”.

2 Cor 4:7-12

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.  We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.  We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.  For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body.  So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

How do we carry around the death of Jesus?  It is by allowing ourselves to die the way He did, uttering, “Father forgive them”.  God cannot stand the stench of our flesh because it reeks of sin.  The only way we can come into His presence is to smell of death.  Let us say with Paul, Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.