November 21 – Anatomy of a Surrender: Death (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)

“Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord.”(2 Corinthian 6:17)

IN WORD:
There comes a time, when all the idols have proven false and when all the lies have proven empty, that we’re ready to surrender. We quit hanging on to those things that we thought gave us life, because we found out that they didn’t. In a sense, we’re ready to die. We’ve believed in our minds for a long time that the promise of God is greater than the promise of sin, but now we’re ready to put that belief to the test. We want to move from intellectual belief to biblical belief — the kind that acts. The time for putting our money where our mouth is has come. We can let go.
This surrender of our idols can be a painful process. We don’t know what life will be like without them. Sometimes that ignorance will cause us to go back and forth on our surrender: We lay those false treasures down and then pick them up, over & over again. But that just adds to our guilt and deepens the difficulty. These idols have grown roots in our hearts, and those roots have run deep. They will require more than a gentle weed-pulling if we’ve had them for any significant time at all. The larger the tree and the deeper the roots, the more violent the uprooting. When our idols go, it will hurt. We have to expect that. It’s part of that cross Jesus told us we would carry if we want to be His disciples. It will leave a big hole, and we pray that God will fill it.

IN DEED:
Have you died? Our body of sin was nailed to the cross when Jesus substituted Himself for us, of course. But in a practical sense, does your sinful flesh linger? The deeper Christian life, the abundant life we’re promised, demands a death. This surrender of our false gods is akin to willingly sacrificing the things we’ve always trusted for our comfort. We forget how much pain that “comfort” has caused us, and how it has diverted our walk with God. We think we’ll miss our sin and we’ll feel as if a deep, dark night is descending. But the night is necessary. We must surrender, we must be emptied, and we must forsake our idols. We know it’s what God calls us to do. We must die.

“Holy obedience . . . Mortifies our lower nature and makes it obey the Spirit.” -St. Francis of Assisi-