End Yourself
No, I don’t mean go ‘off’ yourself. Please don’t do that! It’s more about the spirit of what Spurgeon is saying in the quote below. “To come to the end of yourself is to get to the beginning of your God.” Do you believe that? Do you understand the power of God being unleashed through your weakness? Do you consider your failings an opportunity for God to show Himself through you? These all seem like pretty crazy things to consider and believe. Yet, this kind of mindset is the mark of a true Christian; someone who sees Jesus as Lord in all things — even his failings.
Where’s the glory going? Do we care about this? We should! In the classic song, Eye of the Tiger, there are a couple lines in the first verse which are as follows:
‘So many times it happens too fast, you lose your passion for glory. Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past, you must fight just to keep them alive.’
On some level, that probably seems appealing to most of us. ‘Don’t get complacent and don’t give up. Fight on. Keep your dreams alive.’ What’s wrong with that? If we are sincerely trying to follow God, EVERYTHING is wrong with these lines. Come on, Mark, that’s a bit of an exaggeration isn’t it? Well, let’s see how Jesus weighs in on the matter:
Mat 16:24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
Mat 16:25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Mat 16:26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
—Matthew 16:24-26
I mean, my reading comprehension skills aren’t perfect by any means, but it sure seems like Jesus is saying, “IF YOU ARE GOING TO FOLLOW ME, YOU BETTER END YOURSELF!” Back to my original question, ‘Where’s the glory going?’ If we want it for ourselves, then following our own dreams and fighting to keep our desires alive are not things we will easily cease doing. For professing Christians, we may try to do the impossible — follow God and follow SELF. How do we square that with these words from Jesus? We can’t. However, if we’d rather see the glory go to God, then suddenly our dreams and desires don’t seem nearly important. Our focus has turned to God getting credit (the glory) for what He’s doing through us. His power is most obvious in our weakness. Am I saying we should purposely show ourselves to be weak or mess up intentionally so God’s power can be more easily seen? No! I’m absolutely not saying that. THAT would still be doing things in our own strength. I am saying that when we inevitably have moments of weakness or mess up in some way, we start cultivating the habit of asking God to change our focus from ‘Man, I suck,’ to ‘God, here we are again. Please use my weakness for your glory.’ To the outsider, this may seem absurd; and perhaps as if we’re trying to dodge the fact we’ve messed up and/or pass responsibility onto God. Nothing could be further from the truth as far as what we’re after. Don’t get me wrong, professing Christians have and will continue to try to use God as a shield against having to deal with the consequences of our actions. That’s not something that is pleasing to God, nor does it glorify Him. What we’re ACTUALLY shooting for is instead of some combination of wallowing in our guilt, shame, or whatever feelings our poor choices have ushered in; we acknowledge them and come to God with them. Instead of following our tendencies to fight through things (our own strength), or fix things in the best way we know how (our own understanding); we confess our weakness and acknowledge that God’s way of coming out of the mess we’ve made is probably a whole lot better! It’s the next step though that is so important, especially considering the ‘acknowledgers’ vs ‘entrusters’ dichotomy my buddy Pastor Russ has been preaching on lately. If we stop here, by just ACKNOWLEDGING God, then it’s likely we will still go our own way, even if we’ve said a lot of the right things. However, if we ENTRUST God, then we’ll take the next step of faith to actually follow Him out of our weakness. We will see God’s glory through that. Others will see it too. It’s clear we aren’t doing it all on our own strength, because we’ve continuously shown weakness, yet now where there’s improvement God gets the glory — as He should! As Spurgeon said, ‘Blessed is that extremity which is God’s opportunity.’ Blessed are those who end themselves and find true life in following Jesus!