I LIVE, YET NOT I.
(This is a 5-minute read)
SURRENDERED. TRANSFORMED. FAITH. These are abstract concepts that are often interpreted in a number of ways. However, when the apostle Paul spoke about the surrendered life in Galatians 2:20 (NIVUK), he was not teaching a philosophy or a way of thinking; he was referring to a truism from his own life experiences with God: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me’.
Nowadays, we quote the Bible like a well-oiled machine with little effort to actually live out its teachings. We casually recite grandiose verses like ‘Christ lives in me’ without really reflecting on the true state of our relationship with Jesus. We practice an obedience that is nothing more than a passive avoidance of conflict and overt sins. Our faith lacks an effervescence of personal stories, making Christianity puzzling to those outside the faith. We spend our lives locked in a ‘safe mode’ that involves taking little risks with God and with people.
Yet, Jesus taught, “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for Me, you will find it.” (Matthew 10:39 NLT).
Let’s not be mistaken that the Christian life comes with a glossary of do’s and don’ts. This was exactly what the apostle Paul addressed when he said, “for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:20).
God’s love for us and our love for Him should compel us to live a surrendered life fearlessly, a transformed life gratefully and a faith life recklessly!
What is a Surrendered Life?
Many people outside the Christian faith think that it is burdensome to follow Jesus. All they know about Christian living are prohibitions concerning praying to idols, temptations, getting drunk on wine, pagan festivals, etc. In reality, while our behavior is discernably Christian on the outside, our Christlikeness often fades into ambiguity on the inside. The result is a deep inner conflict between the promises and possibilities of life with God that we read in the Bible, and a failure to thrive and live in those realities in our own lives. Though Jesus has set us free from the power of sin, surrendering our fears and inadequacies to Him just feels too risky (Romans 6:6-7). So we slide into a low-key existence instead of stepping into open and honest conversations with God in the place of total surrender.
Let’s be honest. When was the last time you stopped striving so hard to please everyone and feeling responsible for everyone so their lives won’t fall apart? When was the last time you stepped back and trusted God to take care of the people you love? Think back of the times you refused to play it safe with your constant interventions, surrendered something to God, and gained a perspective that you did not have before? What did you experience that you are now grateful for?
God’s Word is more than a nice-sounding axiom. It has the power to effectuate changes in our lives.
Remember what Matthew 10:39 (NLT) tells us, “If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for Me, you will find it.” God is waiting to take you into many new experiences with Him. But it begins only when you take another fearless step of surrender to Him.
“When your will is God’s will, you will have your will.”
Charles Spurgeon.
What is a Transformed Life?
A transformed life involves a crossover which can be described as a shift in our decision to do what God says without allowing our opinions and feelings to interfere.
Crossovers don’t happen until we follow and act on what God tells us to do. God saved an entire generation of Israelites from an Egyptian army by parting the Red Sea but the Israelites first had to proceed towards the ocean before they saw the dry path that opened for them to cross on foot (read Exodus 14:28-31).
Crossovers don’t depend on whether we feel confident about ourselves or about what God will do. In fact, we will often find ourselves wrestling with great anxiety and facing great uncertainties in the place of crossover but they will not change the outcomes. Only when we crossover with Jesus, will we move from spiritual darkness to light, from feeling shame and guilt to accepting God’s righteousness, from living with a heart hardened by negativity and unforgiveness to one that becomes tender with hope, love and empathy, from being held back by the defeat of past failures to one that is hopeful of a different future, from being trapped in sinful cycles of behaviour to one that is free and forgiven, and finally, from a life that is cursed to one that is blessed.
Crossovers bring radical transformations in our lives. It is a remaking of our raw and broken human will into a strength that is nested in God’s power to redeem and reform our lives.
When we experience God’s transformation in our relationships and in different aspects of our lives, we can resolutely say that “the old life is gone; a new life has begun!” (2 Cor 5:17b NLT). Crossovers are not one-time events: God’s transformation in our lives is extensive, deep and ongoing as long as we live. Our lives ought to be a ‘live’ narrative of God’s abounding truth and grace.
What is a Faith Life?
We don’t live a faith life when we just think that we can trust God to a certain extent, trust ourselves to a certain extent and let consequences pan out to a certain extent. That is scientific thinking: you use a formula (or a way of thinking) and reproduce a similar outcome in different scenarios.
By contrast, a faith life is one that trusts God fully without reservation. Even when it goes against our natural, logical thinking. Even when we feel foolish telling close ones about it and find ourselves on a lonely journey of trusting God. Even when we cannot show believable evidence that our faith will be rewarded. To live a faith life starts with the decision to surrender every detail of our lives to God, even if there is a ten per cent chance that we can work things out on our own.
When we live a faith life, we learn to live by faith, and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7 NIVUK). We also learn that God thinks and operates differently from us: His foolishness is wiser than our wisdom and His weakness is stronger than human strength (1 Corinthians 1:25 NIV). Our relationship with God is one that gives Him pleasure because “…without faith it is impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:6 NIVUK).
Our transition from a Surrendered Life to a Transformed Life to a Faith Life is both concurrent and iterative. It is concurrent because the act of submitting and being transformed can happen simultaneously in different aspects of our lives. It is iterative because as life presents us with new challenges, we will return to the place of surrender to God, and once again, experience the transformation that He alone can bring out through our faith.
QUESTION: Are you aware of a problem in your life that is increasingly hard to ignore no matter how hard you try? God knows how important it is to you, and what it means for you to be holding yourself back from the transformation that He alone can bring about. Ask God to help you step into a surrendered life. Declare by faith today, ‘I live, yet not I’.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR session held on 6 November 2021.
