“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old is gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
As long as we continue to cling to the old, we will never be able to take hold of the new.
Show me, Lord Jesus, all of the ways I am still clinging to the old, in order that I might actually be made new.
Life with God is about learning to open our hands. The only problem is that hands—particularly the hands of the soul—tend to open slowly, often one finger at a time. It is a long process, requiring much time and space and focused attention. A process that requires as much patience as it does diligence.
While life (particularly
spiritual life) typically moves from orientation to disorientation to
reorientation, our knee-jerk reaction to disruption and disorientation is to
revert back to—or strive to achieve—some old form of orientation, rather than
allowing it to usher us into something that is new and beautiful. And when we do this, it is almost always destined
for failure, frustration, or, even worse, stagnation. We cannot cling to our old ways and think
that growth can still be a possibility.
“Clinging creates a
shrinking within the soul,” writes Sue Monk Kidd, “a shrinking of possibility
and growth. The need to cling to ‘how it
was’ can be overpowering.” God wants so
much more for us than that. In fact, he
is always calling us beyond where we are, not back to where we were. Clinging to the old always seems to result in
an inability to welcome the new and beautiful.
“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:68-69)
Years ago, a young couple who
are dear friends of ours were going through a significant life struggle. The pain and desperation were both devastating
and overwhelming. When I asked the
husband how he was dealing with the struggle and the heartache, he replied, “At
first I was tempted to get mad at God, but then he said to me, ‘We’re past that
now, aren’t we?’ And he was right.” He had come to understand God, and God’s
goodness in a deep and profound way. He
didn’t just believe that God was good, he knew that goodness.
I think that’s what Simon
Peter was saying right here. After all,
many of Jesus’ disciples had “turned back and no longer followed him,” but
Simon Peter had stayed. What was the
difference? I think the difference was
that Simon Peter, just like my young friend, not only believed in the goodness
of God, but he knew it—he had experienced it firsthand in a deep and profound way.
To believe (pisteuō)
means to be fully persuaded of, and to know (ginōskō) means to
become intimately acquainted with. One
without the other will not suffice. It
is not enough just to know intellectually.
In order to truly believe, we must also know relationally. We will never be convinced of the goodness of
God’s heart until we have experienced that goodness firsthand. It is this relational knowing that
anchors our intellectual believing in a deep trust in, and experience
of, his goodness. That’s why Simon Peter
just couldn’t walk away; he knew better.
His response was not, “I have no other choice,” but, “I know, I know, I
know, that you are good, whatever this life may bring.” May we be the same.
“And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.” (Mt. 27:50, ESV)
If you look up the word yield
in the dictionary, it will say “to give up or over; to relinquish or
resign; to surrender.” And if you look at
the Greek word used here by Matthew (aphiēmi) it means “to let
go, let alone, let be; to give up.”
True confession time: I am
not a great yielder. I am not good at
letting go of my rights, privileges, preferences, plans, or agendas, for the
sake of another. In fact, whenever I see
a yield sign on the road, my knee-jerk response is, “If I get there first, then
they will have to yield.”
Yet here in Matthew we see
our Savior yielding up the most precious thing of all, his very life. He lets go of his rights and privileges and
preferences for our sakes. And then he
has the audacity to tell us that if we really want to follow him, we must do
the same.
Oswald Chambers said it well
when he said: “He never asks us to decide for Him, but to yield to him—a very
different thing.” Life with Jesus is not
about conquering, but about yielding; something he tried to get the disciples to
understand time after time. And now it’s
our turn.
Lord Jesus, teach us what it means to yield up our lives to you the way you did for us.
“Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 5:3)
What does it really mean to be poor in spirit? The word poor in the Greek is ptōchos, which means “to crouch; to lower oneself; to take the posture of a beggar; to be lacking anything.” It is both a realization and a choice. Thus, those who are poor in spirit have chosen, like Jesus did, to make themselves nothing. And since they are not concerned with building their own kingdom, they can be fully given to the kingdom of God.
Forgive me, Lord Jesus, when I try to raise myself high rather than
crouch low. For only when I learn to crouch
low will I be truly blessed.
