Casandra Martin

You could hear the ache in her voice. “I know what to do. I understand what Jesus wants for me. Why is it so hard?”

Surrender is hard. It doesn’t seem like it should be. We want to follow Jesus. We long to please Him, find favor in His eyes, and be transformed into His image. We know the right path to walk. We are clear about His claim on our lives. But we just don’t do it.

Why is it so hard to do what He calls us to do? To give up what needs to be given into His hands? To take on the beauty He wants to embed in our lives?

Dying is difficult. Jesus doesn’t hide the cost of following Him. It requires that we deny ourselves, put self to death, and crucify the old man. Surrender is hard because we have to die in order to live. We have to put our desires, plans, sense of control, and agendas to death so that His wisdom can take hold of our lives. It is all well and good to talk about it, but the actual dying is difficult.

There is pain involved in dying. It represents an end. There is a finality about it that causes us to pause. That pause is the moment of decision. Faith is the fuel that helps us take His hand and move to the other side.

Dying is difficult, but the truth is that it is not as difficult as refusing to live in His love. Refusing to die kills us slowly. It strangles our hope, stomps on our courage, and shatters our joy. We will never experience all the abundance and fullness He has in store for us until we are willing to hang self on a cross.

My Jesus Resolution today is to walk through death in order to experience full life. I am going to give up what I have been holding on to. I am going to turn it off, shut it down, walk away, and close it up. I am going to hang it on the cross, trusting in the promise that He will make all things new.