Garbage Heap

Last week we learnt that we have to listen to and do what our heavenly Father asks us to do. We are talking about how taking up our cross daily means surrender. The cross of Jesus was surrender.

Luke 9:23-25 TPT says, “Jesus said to all of his followers, “If you truly desire to be my disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace my ‘cross’  as your own, and surrender to my ways. For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for my glory, you will discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep. Even if you gained all the wealth and power of this world, and all the things it could offer you, yet lost your soul in the process, what good is that?”

This is Jesus speaking. We are to disown ourselves or in other translations it says “deny yourselves”. The word for “deny” in that verse is the word, “aparneomai” (Strong’s G533) which means to “affirm that one has no acquaintance or connection with someone” or “to forget one’s self, lose sight of one’s self and one’s own interests”.  This means that Jesus is asking us to have no acquaintance or relationship with our old selves. Once we accept Christ in our lives and we choose to follow Him, the old us is gone.

How do we grow to become more like Jesus where, when facing the cross (adversity), we can pray, “Lord not my will but Yours be done”? By losing sight of ourselves and our own interests. By putting God first in everything. Yes, everything.

Sometimes we are attached to our reputation, jobs, personal identity, social status, accomplishments and so on. The Apostle Paul said this in Philippians 3:7-8 says, “Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord! To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now, so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embrace him as Lord in all of his greatness.”

He continues in verses 13 -14 as follows, “I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”

See how our verse says, “forgetting the past”, not “forgetting the bad things that happened in the past”? God does not just want us to lay aside the bad parts of our past. Forgetting the past means forgetting the good things and even the things we are proud of! Yes, go read Philippians 3, the Apostle Paul had a whole list of accomplishments that he threw on that garbage heap and considered as manure.  Total surrender is not about giving God the parts we think need work or parts we think He wants. We lay down everything and we embrace Jesus. We throw everything on the garbage heap because it is all worth nothing in comparison to the delight and wonder of getting to know Christ. 

2 Corinthians 5:15 and 17 says, “He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them… This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”

The old life includes the good, the bad and the ugly. All of it is gone. We start afresh in Christ. Surrender is laying aside our whole life, not the parts we think are important. It is laying down our finances, our relationships, our hopes and dreams, our sexuality, our jobs, our goals, whatever it may be, we lay it all down and we follow Christ.

Does this mean you go quit your job today? No. It means you surrender to the will of God in your life in every area of life. You may want to quit your job and God says “Stay.” You may want to do amazing things for Jesus and He says, “No.” God knows what He has put inside of all of us. He knows what we can and cannot do and He has a plan for all of us individually and uniquely tailored to who He has called us to be.  

When we surrender and allow God’s will to be done in our lives, only then can we truly begin to live and see exactly what it is we were created for. Why are you here? Why were you born when you were born in this time we are living in? None of it is by accident. The answer to those questions is found in surrender. We don’t have the blueprint for our lives but He does. Trust in God’s plan.

Love and blessings,

Melissa Tsingano.