The True Life of Believer

Matthew 16:24-26, “24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

 The true life of a believer is that of total surrender. We do that by denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following Him. If you consistently do those three things, your walk with Jesus will be so impactful and powerful. We will look at these things in detail but before we do, look at the fruit of doing these three things.

v.25, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”

 The fruit is that we get life. When the bible is talking about life or eternal life, it does not mean that we live forever.  We are spirit beings; we do not cease to exist. Physical death is not the final thing for us, all physical death is, is a change of address. When you physically die, you are simply changing your address from this physical world to the spiritual world. What determines your destination in the spiritual world is if you said yes to Jesus or rejected Him. John 17 explains what life is.

John 17:1-3, "Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, 2 as You have given Him authority over all flesh, that He should give eternal life to as many as You have given Him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

 Eternal life is when we know God the Father and God the Son. The word know is the Greek word ‘Ginosko’ and it means to intimately know someone. It is the word usually translated for sex. Eternal life is when we intimately know God the Father and God the Son. When we do the three things being outlined in verse 24, we will become intimate with God the Father and God the Son.

Deny Myself

The first thing we must do to grow in intimacy with God the Father and God the Son is we must deny ourselves. We are a triune being, we are a spirit, we have a soul and we live in this physical body. The day you got saved, your spirit was the only part that was saved. Your Soul (mind, will and emotions) is being saved as you renew your mind with the scriptures and your body will be saved on resurrection morning, when Jesus comes back. The day you got saved, Jesus came into your life and became one with you; but you still have the same thoughts and same struggle you had the previous day. Salvation does not wipe away all your issues; salvation empowers you to overcome all your issues. So, the same issues you had before you said yes to Jesus are still there. You still have the same thoughts as you had before. Now your desire for certain things might be taken away but those thoughts did not go away.

1 Corinthians 9:27, “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.”

 We deny ourselves when we discipline our bodies and bring them into subjection. When the temptations of what you used to do before you got saved start rising in your heart and mind, you tell yourself no. We all struggle with something, mine is pride, some of you might be weed, sex or other things, but you discipline your body and bring it to subjection.

2 Corinthians 12:7-10, “7 And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. 8 Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. 9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore, most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

 The thorn in the flesh was Paul’s struggle; we all have our own thorn in the flesh that we struggle with. Paul asked the Lord to take it away and look at God’s response.

v.9, “…My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

 This is how we deny ourselves. When God tells him, ‘My grace is sufficient’ He isn’t telling him to suck it up and move on. The grace of God empowers us to do His will. So, what God told Paul was, I have empowered you to overcome that thorn in the flesh. And we see God’s strength, when we admit our weakness and trust Him to help us through that. So, when we are trying to deny ourselves, when our old habits try to come back into our lives, when that thorn in the flesh manifests itself; we must remember in that hour that His Grace is sufficient. That He has empowered you and I to overcome that struggle. That all I must do is call on His name and His strength will be manifested in My weakness.

Take up the Cross

For us to grow in intimacy with God the Father and God the Son, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross. When we deny ourselves, we reject our old sinful habits. When we take up the cross, we deny our will.

Matthew 26:39 & 42 & 44-46, “39 He went a little farther and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.”…42 Again, a second time, He went away and prayed, saying, “O My Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done.”…44 So He left them, went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words. 45 Then He came to His disciples and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise, let us be going. See, My betrayer is at hand.”

Jesus died in this garden first before dying on the cross. The death He died in the garden is the death of giving up His will for God’s will. In His case, He knew what God’s will was and so He did it. In our case we might not know what God’s will is in our lives, but we all know His expectations of us as believers. Taking up the cross is us giving up our plans for His plans, it’s us giving up our wills for His wills, it’s us giving up our ambitions for His ambitions.

If we don’t know His plans for us, then we make sure we have the right heart posture. We make sure that we are spending time reading His scriptures, we make sure we spend time praying, we make sure we are part of a church and serve in that church. And if we have our own plans, we surrender those to Him and pray to get His guidance.

Taking up our cross will lead us into partnership with God the Father and that is His heart. He wants to partner with us, He wants to be part of our daily lives, He wants to commune with us and get close to us. Taking up our cross is putting our will on the altar and saying yes to His will.

Follow Me

For us to grow in intimacy with God the Father and God the Son, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross and follow Him. When we deny ourselves, we reject our old sinful habits. When we take up the cross, we deny our will. When we follow Him, we accept Him as our Lord. A lot of Christians accept Jesus as savior but not as their Lord. We get excited when we remember how Jesus as saved us from the clutches of hell. We get excited when we remember how Jesus has taken us from the Kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of Light. And that’s where we usually stop, we don’t go into the next part of our salvation.

Salvation has two parts, the savior part and the Lordship part. Jesus as savior is cool but we just ignore Jesus as our Lord. We must accept Jesus not just as our savior, but as our Lord. Accepting Jesus as our Lord means accepting Jesus as our authority, master or ruler. It means accepting that He has the final say in our lives. You can see why a lot of people just accept Jesus as savior and not as Lord. Accepting Jesus as Lord means that you willingly put your life in His hands and give Him permission to direct your life. All those New Testament saints made that commitment to make Him their Lord. Are we willing to make that commitment?

Things to Remember:

There is so much that God wants to reveal to us, but we are so busy enjoying our sin, catering to our wills and not accepting His Lordship. God, the creator of Heavens and earth, the alpha and the omega desires to know you and show you great and mighty things. I have experienced things that have left me speechless.

Matthew 16:24-26, “24 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

When we deny ourselves, we reject our old sinful habits. When we take up the cross, we deny our will. When we follow Him, we accept Him as our Lord.