Living for God means truly living, and this episode delves into the transformative journey of surrendering control of our lives to Him. We explore the profound principle that to find true joy and satisfaction, we must die to ourselves and allow God to guide our decisions. The discussion emphasizes that trusting in God's love and wisdom leads to a more fulfilling existence. Through various biblical verses, we highlight the importance of relinquishing our will in favor of divine guidance. Ultimately, we invite listeners to consider the benefits of this surrender and the authentic selves they can discover in the process.
Takeaways:
Living for God requires us to die to ourselves, which leads to true life.
Dying to ourselves means giving up control and allowing God to guide our decisions.
Trusting God with our lives brings joy, satisfaction, and a sense of purpose.
It is essential to recognize that our own understanding often leads to poor choices.
We can turn our will over to God, who knows what is best for us.
CS Lewis emphasizes that surrendering ourselves to God ultimately reveals our true selves.
Hi, welcome to the Hobo Soul podcast of road advice from the Bible and from me, Yvon Prehn, someone who's a little further down the road of life. I'll talk to you every weekday for about five to 10 minutes, with periodic longer talks on serious Saturdays. Let's get started with our topic today,
Speaker B:
Which is episode 21, Living for God means really living.
Truly living for God involves one of the great reversals of the Christian life.
We've talked about this before, how that just when we think that we are totally giving up everything, that God changes it totally. Now, things don't happen as we expect. But to find out precisely more of what does happen and to expand our earlier ideas, keep listening for more.
Our quote today is from George MacDonald, who said,
"If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, and he that does not live to God is dead."
Our challenge
"And yet wonder of wonders is that when we feel we've died and given all to God, he turns everything around and we realize this is what we were created for. This is what will give us true joy and satisfaction in life and forever."
Now let's talk about this a little bit more.
The Bible again and again talks about how important it is to die to ourselves if we want to truly live for God. There are many verses, but a few of them that I want to share with you.
Luke 9:24, where it says, for whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
And Mark 8:35, where it says, whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and for the gospel will find it.
And probably the most powerful one as it goes beyond simply losing ourselves to actually crucifying ourselves, is in Romans 6:6, where it says, we know that our old sinful nature was crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We're no longer slaves to sin.
But what does it really mean in practice to do this? Now, though, it's a very serious issue.
I think we take the whole idea of dying to ourselves from and whatever that means, from just simply losing ourselves to crucifying ourselves to whatever it is we make it into some difficult, overly spiritual thing when it really isn't.
It's actually pretty simple.
To die to ourselves and live to God means, at its core, to simply give up the control of our life to God, which is really the only sensible thing to do when we really get to know God. I don't actually die, but I Kill off my will as the ruler, the decision maker in my life.
If we're honest, running our lives, ourselves hasn't always worked out in the best ways possible. We don't always make good choices. We love foolishly.
We think we're standing firm when everybody else sees that we're just stubborn and we can't help ourselves because we often truly don't know any better.
But once we become a Christian, we have a choice. If we want to, we can turn over our will, our decision making control to Jesus.
Now what makes it simple is when we're honest and realize that instead of ourselves continuing to make sometimes unwise and sometimes foolish decisions, we can trust the decision making to someone who knows all about what's going to happen in the future, the future of the world, your family, friends, what events are going to happen, what you need to be prepared for, how you can be protected, all of those things.
We turn it over to someone who is defined by love. Not someone who just loves sometimes, but who is love part of his character? What defines God as God is that he is love. He won't be stingy in his love for us. Every action that he does towards us is done in love and with our best in mind.
He's also someone who created you not only for a satisfying life now, but with an eternal purpose and the satisfaction and joy you will have forever in ways you can't even imagine now, though even now he's preparing you for it.
And someone who was willing to die for you so you could be with Him. Our God is all those things.
And considering who he is, it seems like a really simple decision to turn our lives over to him, to ask his advice and to allow him to, to make the final decisions rather than relying on ourselves. But we still have a choice.
And when we don't do that, when we don't turn our will over to God, we're kind of like a stubborn child, someone who wants to continue to do things their way.
Now a wise and caring parent knows that the child, that what the child wants to do won't work out well and may even involve some pain for the child if they follow their own desires. But if the child's stubborn enough, the parent may let the child experience the pain so he or she learns that they aren't always right.
But sometimes children learn to, you might say, die to themselves early on if they have good and wise parents.
And then as they trust the parent more and more, rather than their unconsidered and just spontaneous feelings and mans, they learn to live and and live well. You can't have two wills running your life. Either you will do it, or you will allow God to do it.
If you die to yourself, or however you want to put it, and let God run your life, you'll find when you do that, the benefits are incredible. CS Lewis put the whole process this way, and I can't think of a better way to end this podcast than the way he puts it.
Let me read this rather lengthy quote to you, but it's quite good, so listen to it.
"The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. Because he made us. He invented us.
He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to his personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.
This principle runs through all life, from top to bottom. Give up yourself and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death.
Death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day, and death of your whole body. In the end. Submit with every fiber of your being and you will find eternal life. Keep nothing back.
Nothing that you have not given away will ever truly be yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead.
Look to yourself and you will find in the long run, only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him, everything else thrown in."
That's all for this podcast, for transcripts, links to related material, and much more to help you learn to know, trust,apply and teach the Bible, go towww.bible805.com
Speaker B:
For now, let me end with this benediction and prayer.
May you walk each day surrounded by the gracious love of the Father, guided by the gentle wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and conscious of the astounding, real presence of Jesus, who will walk with you until you're no more a hobo soul, no more a transient wandering heart, but at home in the kingdom prepared for you with your God forever. Amen.
