Robert E Rasmussen.com

Let me take you a bit further in the previous story of my faith crisis in college. That was quite a few years ago, and I did not at that time think of it as a Gethsemane-like call to surrender, but I now realize that it was. True to form, God wanted my surrender because He intended to ask for sacrifice. He might have worked in my heart to ask me to pursue architecture to the best of my ability. In a different believer, God might have required the sacrifice of climbing the professional ladder and designing or starting a company, not as a driven business person but as a faithful worker seeking to worship God in the marketplace. He did not do that with me. My faith crisis became a career crisis. As the Father required of Jesus the sacrifice of His life, the Father required of me, in a much milder version, my life as an architect. I did not know the specifics, but I believed that God wanted me to serve in a full-time occupation in ministry. This had been something I wanted to avoid because my dad was both a pastor and missionary. I had seen the jobs and wasn’t interested! You might ask, “Was it a difficult sacrifice?” Yes, and no. Yes in the sense that I had dreamed of the kinds of houses I could design (and live in!), and the cars I would drive, swooping into the three-car garage under the house! But in a deeper way, it was not a difficult sacrifice to make. I’ll tell you why (and here I am actually giving some counsel). When you love God, and want to be like Jesus, it is a deep relief when you finally know His will, even when it is hard, even when in a sense it is what you didn’t want to hear. Because deep down inside, what we really want, you and I, is not the amazing house and sports cars to go with it. What we really want is to please God.

We follow Jesus by laying down our lives in sacrifice.

The markers along the Jesus way follow the pattern of obedience established by Jesus Himself. As Gethsemane led inevitably to Golgotha for Jesus, surrender leads certainly to sacrifice for the disciple today. This is not unwelcome news. This is the way of the wonderful gospel – the work of Jesus working its way in into the story of we who believe.

Our journey as disciples inevitably and frequently passes through death-like experiences. In following the Jesus way, the disciple is continually called lay down his life as Jesus did. Jesus made this expectation very clear prior to His death.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor” (John 12:24-26).

The plant or tree that produces fruit had to first give off a seed which in turn died. In the same way, the disciple who desires to follow Jesus must first sacrifice his love of this life and what it offers. The one who follows Christ in surrender and sacrifice will encounter Jesus, not only in heaven, but also along the trail of the Jesus way.

So thoroughly does sacrifice characterize Jesus’ disciples that we speak of ourselves as sharing in His crucifixion. The Apostle Paul spoke passionately of this.

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).

“and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:15).

“But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).

We disciples will encounter Jesus in many opportunities to lay down our lives for His sake. These events will be difficult to bear. They may come in extended seasons of hardship and loss. But when we see our death-like experiences as times of sharing the suffering of Christ, they can have profound spiritual meaning. As we mature in our walk with Christ, we can more readily see our call to sacrifice as opportunities to bring glory to God through our obedience.

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We instinctively defend ourselves and avoid danger. The call to take up our cross and follow Jesus will therefore meet strong resistance from within, for the Jesus way is a way of risk. Jesus taught us that the desire to preserve our own well-being can disqualify us from gaining life which eternal. He put this in the strongest terms,

“For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34-36).

This bold contrast seems harsh, but Jesus describes a spiritual dynamic that is essential for the disciple to grasp. One who applies his energies to this earthly life cannot at the same time apply those energies to life eternal. In the same way, a disciple who desires to build into the kingdom of God cannot with the same fervor invest in the kingdoms of this earth. In this way, we see that the call to sacrifice is a call away from the magnetic pull of humanities values.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:1-2).

Conformity to this world’s system leads to self-preservation and advancements measured by the metrics of this life: material possessions, title, power, security, and self-gratification. The call of Golgotha on the disciple beckons us to live counter to the culture and values of this world. Our minds must be renewed according to the Holy Spirit. We must see that our reasonable service to God is to present our bodies as sacrifices, still living, but dead to self-preservation.

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