You know what it feels like: you are on fire; you are ready, willing and able; you don’t need any more sermons on Rom 12:1. You are a living sacrifice. You have read Radical. You have read Crazy Love. You are ready to die. You are ready to die for Christ, the Gospel and whatever other mission God puts you on.
Wherever, whatever, however God, I am ready to sacrifice it all.
Problem: there is no altar. Well, not like you thought. If it exists, it does not exist in the glory of your perceptions. You pray continually for God to show you his direction. There has to be a place for me in his army.
Here’s what you do:
You decide to become a missionary. You talk to your wife and your family about quitting your job and becoming a full time missionary in Africa. Why Africa? Just because. You wife thinks you are nuts and your children don’t understand. All attempts to infect her with the desire to die have the opposite effect. But you are not about to question your calling. In your spiritual high, you place some distance between you and your family, believing that it is the Lord’s will. Discouragement has yet to set in.
Or maybe . . .
You decide to start a church. Your passions will be realized as you minister in your local community, transforming all those around you with the preaching—expository preaching—of the word of God. You are sick of the churches that would not know the Gospel if it hit them in the knee cap. You are going to be the lighthouse on a hill. You don’t really know what to do so you get on Microsoft Word and make a flier. You put a nice Bible graphic that you found from Google image search on the flier, along with the announcement of the new Bible study that is going to be held at your friend’s coffee shop.
The day comes. Hundreds of fliers have been handed out. Two people show. One is your wife. The other is a nice young girl who just broke up with her boyfriend and had nothing else to do that night. It’s past time for the Bible study to start and you look outside in hopes that someone else will show. Someone pulls up and leaves upon the realization that they might be the only ones there. You attempt to teach the Bible study, but the disappointment of teaching two people when you hoped for 30 to 40 takes the wind out of your sails. All you want to do is go home and cry.
Or maybe . . .
You decide to go to seminary, but don’t get accepted.
Or maybe . . .
You start with a small missions endeavor, but you don’t get the funds.
Or maybe . . .
You go to your pastor and tell him you will serve wherever, but, not only is he not as excited about your prospective involvement as you thought he would be, there is nothing for you to do. He says he will call you if something comes up. Nothing ever comes up.
Or maybe . . .
You start with a bang, but then it fizzles and no one is as anxious and excited as you are. You feel let down and discouraged.
What do you do when you try . . . I mean really try to die for Christ, but he won’t let you. What do you do when you are on the altar and you don’t die, but your are getting really sunburned?
This is to those of you who feel called to do something big for the Lord, but it never happens.
Don’t give up your zeal. The first two illustrations given above are round about reenactments of my life. Someone has once said that the Christian life is a life of starting over—every morning! Don’t let let-downs discourage you. You may be let down, but God has not set you down. Remember, he is not setting you on a 100 meter dash, but on a long distance run—a long distance run. I love new Christians who are set on giving their lives up for the Lord. But I am so saddened when I see those who had such a zeal reenter their old life with great discouragement, wondering why the Lord did not use them. God will use you. God is using you. But he does not carve out flashes in the pan. He creates endurance. I know . . . He does not move as quickly as we like. Keep the zeal and passion, but let the Lord set the pace. This is the hardest thing to do.
Ministry is not the de facto solution to satisfy your intense craving to die for the Lord. Remember, you are a living sacrifice. A living sacrifice. Don’t be surprised if you live! Don’t be surprised if you live a life that is rather ordinary, not making a significant impact every direction you turn. Don’t impose such a goal upon the Lord. Remember Abraham? What the heck was so great about his life? I don’t know that he ever held a great evangelistic crusade. He never traveled all over the world with nothing but his Bible. He never wrote any books. He did not pastor a church. He did not even start a blog. From what I read about him, if it weren’t for the Bible and God’s testimony about him, he would have never made much of a footprint in the world. Or, better, we would not have recognized the footprint he did make. Why then is he so great? Because he was a friend of God. He trusted him. Everyday, he believed God. He endured quietly.
Sometimes being a living sacrifice is just quietly trusting the Lord.
Be quiet and tranquil. The Lord will show your path in your tranquility. Paul tells the Thessalonians to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands” (1Th 4:11). Ouch. But impacts are never “quiet.” I want to make an impact. I want to stir things up. I want to drop a bomb on the world leaving behind the sign of the Trinity! The problem is that your bomb could be the very opposite of God’s plan. Your bomb could be you getting off the altar. God will direct you.
I have just watched a very dear friend who had so much zeal for the Lord, so much passion to follow him, so much desire to die that he now sits, divorced, estranged from his wife and family, with his head in his hands wondering why the Lord gave him a spiritual cement job. In his zeal, he outran the Lord and left his wife because he could not wait for her to catch up.
Your passions may open the doors you expect and they may not. But you are to sit on the altar, no matter where you are or how God leads, and be a living sacrifice. Chuck Swindoll once said that the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar. Get back on the altar.
What do you do when you cannot die for Christ? Live for him.
20 replies to "When You Want to Die for Christ, But He Won’t Let You"
I think that’s an excellent article, Michael. Thank you.
We can often fall into the trap of thinking that the best form of Christian service is to travel to an exotic far-flung destination and convert multitudes of non-believers, or to establish a large para-church organisation to strengthen believers in the faith or relieve the needs of the poor or care for the sick etc. In other words, to do something impressive in the world’s eyes. We forget that actually, if God wanted to, He could convert the whole world with or without our personal help, and He could feed all the starving people in the world with or without our personal contribution. What is most important in God’s eyes is not what we do but what sort of person we are – do we love God with all our heart and do all we can for Him in whatever ways our circumstances permit. Even if we are fully paralysed and unable to lift a finger to do anything, or if we spend many years in solitary confinement in a Saudi prison cell where we cannot influence anything or anyone, do we simply love God wholeheartedly & steadfastly and delight in Him as our portion for this life?
The real heroes in heaven will probably not be those who are big famous names in the church but the little people who are unknown to most of us but who have remained loyal to God despite much adversity, provocation, and temptation throughout their humdrum, unspectacular lives in some quiet backwater of the world. Maybe their unique spiritual gifts enabled them to fulfil no more prestigious form of service than cleaning the church toilets, but boy, did those toilets shine every week! And they did it week after week for many years for Jesus’ sake without grumbling or skimping, even when the pastor never thanked them and no-one else in the church offered to help.
This is great. I just heard the testimonies of two seminary profs yesterday in class, talk about their winding paths and closed doors. It was interesting to see how the Lord orchestrated their lives, which involved disappointment and changed direction. What struck me most is that they just kept walking, putting one foot in front of the other and doors opened where they needed to.
Great post, we all need to be reminded of this, thanks brother!
Almost my story to the letter. But thank God I got some early wise counsel that kept me from goin too far. Fast forward over thirty years andnow I can look back and see how God used my broken life to touch hundreds of people and literally reach all the inhabited continents to some degree. And I am a “lowly” businessman with a great family and many, many friends. And almost everyday I get to have helpful input into the life of someone or two.
“As you go, preach.” is this best pulpit in the world becasue it is God’s pulpit.
Thanks for the reminder! We all have the tendency to ignore God’s glory in the “mundane” things of life. I believe, that for many of us, this is where God chooses to use us. Living life, taking joy in the mundane in light of His glory.
Nice post and it is a great reminder that our lives should be focus on God and what he wants and that the little things makes a big difference and that we were all called to live for him not the other way around.
Good piece. I might add one bit though.
“Don’t forget, you are not Messiah, you are in need of one.” This sort of thing happens a lot with guys going into the ministry. They all think they are going to be the next Piper or Keller and then if it doesn’t seem like God is using them, they get discouraged, wondering what happened.
Keep doing God’s work, whether it’s glamorous or not. God did not call you to glamor. Unfortunately, many of us forget the simple fact that a Messiah has already come. You are merely fortunate enough to be a sign in the road.
Awesome post! I just read those two books together last summer and was filled with anxiety. I was in a quandry at that point. Yet, it started a journey of what my motivation really was in my walk as a Christian. My questions were “Is it my striving or is it relying on the completed work of Christ on my behalf?”, “Where is my peace and joy?”, and “Is Christ really in charge of my sanctification?” Thanks be to God through His Son Christ Jesus. How liberating it is to fall at the feet of Christ and admit I can’t do it without Him. How wonderful the love that pours from an overflowing heart filled with Christ to my neighbor. How cheerful it is to give to the Lord from knowing it isn’t my effort He needs. It was all Christ’s effort for me!
thanks so much for this encouragement–it is exactly where we have found ourselves lately. And I really feel really, really sunburned, really 🙂
Yes, spectacular service is not everyone’s calling, but we can “die” for Christ by “dying to self” no matter what our state in life.
From Mother Teresa:
Little things are indeed little, but to be faithful in little things is a great thing.
and
There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives – the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family.
Find them.
Love them.
Thank-you
I so desperately needed to hear this today. Thank you.
Ruth. She was an alien, welfare corn picker upper…. Abigail. Wife of a drunken bum…of course Rahab the call girl and Mary! just minding her own business being a good girl…..The zeal is in enduring, seeking, being willing..willing to sit still or willing to move, willing to do what God wills.
Thank you for this, it is very timely. I’m so highly driven that for most of my life I have thrown myself full throttle into something or another (always thinking it’s the Lord’s will of course). As I have grown older and had more children I have learned to be content with God himself as my portion. However, because of my personality, I know this can be an area of temptation for me. I am SO incredibly grateful for my gracious husband who tries not to crush my zeal but guides me and protects me from falling in this way again.
Really, thank you for this. I think zealous and passionate people need wise, tender and encouraging people in their life. And they need someone to help them to walk through the door when the Lord does open it, without being afraid of getting burned again.
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I feel pretty discouraged when I try to die for Christ and have a passion yet nothing exciting happens.
I guess I shouldn’t try to crawl off the alter just yet. 🙂
Yes I think this a great one 🙂
Great post!
That reminds me once, I asked God to make me like Daniel in a certain place. All I remember was people seeking for my head. There were free enemies coming out of no where.
Only great passion for God produces that patient that builds the awsome work that our souls are seeking. Not everyone is willing to teach one single child in Sunday School. Not everyone will spend months after a single soul. Not everyone will wait for years to see a miracle, but those who have the true call and are seeking the glory of God rather than their own.
Thanks, God bless.