Invictus soundtrack – Vitaliy Zavadskyy

For the past few months I have been in rebellion against the Lord.

Do you know what that feels like?

It’s lots of fun. You get to do whatever you want. You get to rule your life and decide how things go and what it going to happen. You are in control and you get to call the shots. It seems as through no one and nothing can touch you or take you down. You are on top of the world. It’s a pretty awesome feeling…at first.

Then the heaviness and weight of life starts to wear you down. Jokes just are not as funny anymore. So you feel like you have to have more fun in your life so that you will be able to laugh. More than ever before, you feel like you have to insert yourself into more situations that look like fun just to get the same jolt and the same love feelings like you felt before your rebellion. You start becoming frantic. Life just isn’t enough anymore. You need more.

You begin to think that people wont understand what you are going through and they just wont be able to help you out. So you start keeping secrets. You keep telling yourself that people just don’t need to know every little detail that is going on in your life. I mean come on, we can be somewhat responsible, right? We tell ourselves we don’t need a babysitter anymore.

But really you are just trying to avoid an explosive situation. You don’t want your current lifestyle to come back and bite you in the butt. So we leave out really key information about what we are doing in our lives and about what we are thinking.

You have to shut the world out bit by bit, because the more you let in the more danger there is for exposure. You have to distance yourself from people as much as possible. Oh, you still hang out with them. But you control the conversation. You refuse to talk about your mistakes and you divert attention away from yourself as much as possible. Or you talk lots about the areas in your life that are still doing alright. But you feel crazy on the inside, as though you are going insane.

Eventually you become depressed. Nothing seems to keep you happy for very long anymore. Instead it would be easier to just go home and curl up in a ball and get lost in a good book or movie. Then you wouldn’t have to face reality. Then you wouldn’t have to face your mistakes. Your whole world starts becoming a dark and sad place. Instead of facing this new world you’ve created for yourself you run from it as much as possible by finding really good distractions.

During this whole time, you just happen to know that the Lord doesn’t like hiding in the dark or keeping secrets. But instead of coming clean, you withdraw from the Lord too. Everything that is going on in life just seems to difficult and hard to confront and deal with. Distractions are much more fun and easy to deal with.

Life doesn’t quiet work out the way you want it to though. Things always seem to pop up that are out of your control and begin to expose you for who you really are–a dark and sinful person. Somehow the Lord always manages to expose you and show you the sin and evil inside you, especially after you have decided to walk with Him and to follow Him wherever He may lead you. He takes those requests and promises seriously and helps us uphold our end of the bargain. He will never force us to follow Him or to change our ways for Him, but He will expose us and let our worlds crash in on us, as they always inevitably do.

Truly truly I say to you that trying to control your own life only ends in misery. And nothing that the Lord did to you, but a grave you dug all by yourself. Because we are such sinful people we don’t need anyone else’s help to dig a good grave for ourselves for we are perfectly capable of ruining our lives all by lonesome.

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. (Rom 12:1-2)

Paul urges us to let go of our control and to see the light and grace the Lord offers us. We don’t have to live in that dark and depressing world inside our minds that is driving us insane. We don’t even have to go and correct all of our mistakes on our own. We don’t have to learn how to be happy and joyous on our own. We don’t have to learn how to live a life which is good, acceptable and pleasing to the Lord. His love covers a multitude of sins.

Eventually, you have to come to a breaking point because you can no longer deal with life and everything is crowding in on you. Then you get to decide if you want to follow the Lord or not. Whether you want to give your life over to Him and stop messing it up further and further. It feels like trying to pull out all of your teeth and hair to be able to give up control of your life. But when you finally surrender there is no greater feeling in the world. It does not matter to you what others think about how you have dealt with your life. That grave doesn’t seem so imposing or too deep to climb out of anymore. All you care about is that God loves you. And He has let you go through some discipline to understand what David understood in Psalms 23: “Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.” David was confident enough in the Lord’s love for him that David was able to see the discipline as a comfort.

The Lord has been asking me to be willing to give up everything in my life for Him: my family, my friends, my desires, my wants, myself. This request will be made again and again throughout my life and yours too. Are you will to give up control and to be at peace with the Lord? To love Him with all your hear, mind and soul? Paul discovered that he was able to live a completely radical, outlaw lifestyle because he was willing to give up absolutely everything in his life. No one can argue that Paul lead a courageous life that not many others could even dream of living. But everyone secretly desires to be so sold out for an idea, a faith, a belief that they would be willing to do anything for it. Paul believed and died for the grace of God.

What more do you really need in life besides the Lord? Can anything else really sustain you? Can anyone else really love you? Can anything else really make you strong? Can anything else really give you confidence? Can anything else really bring you peace? Can anything else really give you joy that lasts??

This is what it means to live your life as a true outlaw:

And He said to him, ” ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ (Matt 22:37)

I’ve been reading the Jesus Freaks Martyr book and  just finished reading a story about how a few young children were ready to die for their faith because they knew it was the truth. Sunday school children. When they were asked to denounce Christianity for Islam, they replied:

“We will remain Christians because this is the truth.”

In our country we don’t even suffer from hearing about our Christian brothers and sisters getting martyred. We don’t even understand the concept of being under heavy persecution. These children did. And they were ready to die anyway just because they would not deny Jesus.

This makes me feel so compromised with the world because I do not take advantage of every moment for the Lord, but instead I find that most of my day is consumed with thoughts of myself.

So, what did these kids understand that I don’t?  How could they live their lives with so much integrity? Perhaps it’s because they were under persecution that they understood that there is nothing else worth living for. “Nothing else worth living for.” We keep using that phrase, but do we really understand that? Do we live it out in our lives? I think not.

If I really understood that there is nothing else worth living for except for the Lord and His gospel, then how come it’s so easy for me to put off praying and watch a movie or do something else instead? Why reading the Word, where I could get the strength to live this type of life, is so easy to procrastinate about? Why I schedule the rest of my life before I think to “schedule” the Lord in? Why watching movies and working on my hobbies and talking to friends is so much more appealing than spending time with the Lord? Why?

Are you ready to die for what you believe? Would you die for the gospel?

When I ask myself this question it never makes much of an impact or provokes a lot of thought because we are not faced with this choice in America, the “land of the free.”

So what does it mean for us to “pick up our cross and follow” Jesus?

Michael Tait put it very well:

“Our mission may not involve hanging on a cross, being jailed, or being burned at the stake here in America, but we have other, more invisible obstacles. Ours is a society built by pride, materialism, and dedication to the status quo. In a world built of free will instead of God’s will, we must be the Freaks. While we may not be called to martyr our lives, we must martyr our way of life. We must put our selfish ways to death and march to a different beat. Then the world will see Jesus. “

So maybe a more appropriate question for me is: are you ready to give up the life you want? Are you ready to give up your things? Are you ready to give up your money? Are you ready to leave EVERYTHING behind and follow Jesus?

If we gave up all of our rights and all of our expectations and all of our possessions, wouldn’t we be living the life of an outlaw that Christ calls us to?

1 Tim 6:7-11

⁷For we have brought nothing into the world, so we cannot take anything out of it either.

⁸If we have food and covering, with these we shall be content.

⁹ But those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful desires which plunge men into ruin and destruction.

¹⁰For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

¹¹But flee from these things, you man of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance and gentleness.

Those kids gave up everything they had, and they were blessed. They were reviled by the people of this world but by the end of the day there were crowned with the crown of righteousness. Our trials may last for a longer time but when we walk this way we, too, will end the ‘day’ with a crown of righteousness  for leaving what we had or what we could have had behind and being willing to suffer for the Lord.

1 Pet 4:14-16

¹⁴If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you.

¹⁵Make sure that none of you suffers as a murderer, or thief, or evildoer, or a troublesome meddler;

¹⁶but if anyone suffers as a Christian, he is not to be ashamed, but is to glorify God in this name.