Sacrifice and Friendship

August 25th, 2015 by Dave Leave a reply »

I have called you friends… —John 15:15

We will never know the joy of self-sacrifice until we surrender in every detail of our lives. Yet self-surrender is the most difficult thing for us to do. We make it conditional by saying, “I’ll surrender if…!” Or we approach it by saying, “I suppose I have to devote my life to God.” We will never find the joy of self-sacrifice in either of these ways.

But as soon as we do totally surrender, abandoning ourselves to Jesus, the Holy Spirit gives us a taste of His joy. The ultimate goal of self-sacrifice is to lay down our lives for our Friend (see John 15:13-14). When the Holy Spirit comes into our lives, our greatest desire is to lay down our lives for Jesus. Yet the thought of self-sacrifice never even crosses our minds, because sacrifice is the Holy Spirit’s ultimate expression of love.

Our Lord is our example of a life of self-sacrifice, and He perfectly exemplified Psalm 40:8, “I delight to do Your will, O my God….” He endured tremendous personal sacrifice, yet with overflowing joy. Have I ever yielded myself in absolute submission to Jesus Christ? If He is not the One to whom I am looking for direction and guidance, then there is no benefit in my sacrifice. But when my sacrifice is made with my eyes focused on Him, slowly but surely His molding influence becomes evident in my life (see Hebrews 12:1-2).

Beware of letting your natural desires hinder your walk in love before God. One of the cruelest ways to kill natural love is through the rejection that results from having built the love on natural desires. But the one true desire of a saint is the Lord Jesus. Love for God is not something sentimental or emotional— for a saint to love as God loves is the most practical thing imaginable.

“I have called you friends….” Our friendship with Jesus is based on the new life He created in us, which has no resemblance or attraction to our old life but only to the life of God. It is a life that is completely humble, pure, and devoted to God.

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Journal DJR
Good Morning Lord,
Surrender really does work out best of all. But it seems that me and all the humans that I know have to try our other options first. See if we can make it on our own … like Sinatra sang, I did it my way… It seems like we would learn after a while, that surrendering quickly is the best way to go. And maybe I am getting there a little quicker these days. There is a feeling of relief when I do “get there, to Surrender” I think Surrender goes hand in hand with the Objective View or Balcony View that you have been teaching me these last few years.

It’s true. Surrender is actually the price of admission to the balcony…or at least the Balcony View where I enable you to see what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel. Like John said…

John 5:19 Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.

You have asked if it is possible for you to live this same way and what were the ingredients of my walk that you can learn from. Time away, and prayer, of course. But Surrender is the one we are talking about now. My seeing and hearing were only possible because I was 100% surrendered to my purpose. You can be too. Come up here with me. Up those steps to this balcony. Oh, yes that step right there… is called “Surrender”

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