Making Jesus Lord

The last two weeks we've been reading a book called Making Jesus Lord, The Dynamic Power of Laying Down Your Rights by Loren Cunningham, the founder of YWAM (Youth With A Mission). As with the first book, I really enjoyed reading this book. To our culture, the concept of laying down your rights is foreign. "We live in a world in which the protection and exaltation of individual rights has become an obsession".

At the beginning of the book, Loren, talks about walking barefoot, something I have absolutely come to LOVE about living in Kona, HI. We get to worship barefoot; we can walk around campus barefoot, and even take our shoes off during class. In Scripture, taking off your shoes had a very special meaning. God told Moses to take his shoes off during their first confrontation at the burning bush because he was on holy ground. Boaz’s relative took his shoes off when negotiating the right to marry Ruth. David left Jerusalem walking barefoot after being defeated in rebellion. Jesus walked barefoot to Calvary. In the culture at that time, walking barefoot was a sign that you were a slave. Jesus freely surrendered His rights, first as God when He came to earth as man, then rights to a normal birth, rights to be with His earthly family, gave up right to marriage, to a home and money, He surrendered His reputation and finally right to life itself and became obedient to death on the cross. And he did ALL of this to restore US to God. This simply amazes and baffles me!

Jesus showed us how to live our lives and how to conquer the devil. “The ONLY way to conquer is to submit. Jesus wants us to follow Him, going barefoot, losing our rights and gaining the world”.

It’s hard to remember that everything we have is not only a gift from God, but it BELONGS to Him as well. This includes our families and our right to be married and to have certain things.

“RESPONSIBILITIES – RIGHTS = REWARDS OF RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD”

P 24

An important concept the book teaches is for family relationships, as with everything in our lives, “God’s principle always works: We only win when we give up. As we grasp something, we lose it; when we surrender it to God, we gain it. If we hold our loved ones in a tight grip, we end up losing them. Putting any person first in our lives results false expectations, disappointment and hurt, and finally alienation. Only God deserves to be first”. I have found this to be so true in my life, yet also a task that can be seemingly impossible to do sometimes. The beauty of this is that in my weakness, His power is perfected (2Cor12:9). Last week I surrendered my right to be married and began embracing God’s call on my life in a new way! It’s not that I didn’t embrace it before, now it’s a different kind of embrace. With this comes a new freedom. For years, probably since I was a kid, I would always dream about flying, I had these dreams that I could literally fly, in my human form, flapping my arms. Crazy, I know!! Last Friday, as I released this and surrendered other things to God, I felt the extreme freedom that comes with this; I finally realized that God has been telling me that I am free, like a bird, to fly. On a side note, as we were praying and closing up the morning teaching last Friday, a bird pooped on my toe, and in such a random tiny spot. While it sounds gross and crazy, to me it was affirmation of what God was telling me, through His amazing creation, in a way that only made sense to me, a beautiful way! This freedom requires great responsibility and laying down my life, my rights on a daily basis, but the cost of freedom is nothing compared to benefits!

When we relax grip on what we own and open our hand, we allow Him to use what He has placed in it. Scripture is clear that we cannot serve both God and money. We have the right to own things, but God asks us to freely give back what HE has blessed us with. God owns everything, so we can either be a thief and steal from Him or a good steward of what He has entrusted us with, personally I would rather do that latter, even when it’s hard. God is our Provider, every good and perfect gift comes from Him, when we release our rights to spend the money He gives us, we truly see Him this way.

This really stood out to me, Christians already have the resources to fully evangelize the billions in the world who have never head the name Jesus Christ, we have enough to preach the Gospel and physically meet the needs as well. Here are some examples, Loren gives:

· If each person who calls themselves a Christian would give $1, every home on earth would have a bible.

· There are 2,000 unreached ethno-linguistic groups in the world (based on the publication of the book). If only 40 million Christians gave $1 a year, we could support two missionaries for each of these groups.

· For the cost of caring for a pet dog or a cat for a year, a child in a Third World could be given a Christian education.

· There are 16 million refugees in the world, according to most sources. To feed every one of those refugees, it would only cost the 1.6 billion who call themselves Christians one penny a day.

When we give freely as the Lord lead, we are allowed the privilege of seeing God multiply our resources to reach the world.

Each of us is either a missionary or a mission field and is either part of God’s answer or part of His problem. The word missionary means ‘one who is sent’. We are missionaries regardless of our geographic location. We can be missionaries in our classroom, at our work, and in our neighborhoods.

“Christianity that cost nothing is worth nothing” (p.78)

We are made in God’s image, we need to have His view of ourselves and our self-worth, which helps us be secure and transparent with others and gives us the power to forgive. The spirit of immorality must be met with the spirit of purity. Much of sexual immorality is rooted in rejection and satan has a field day with rejection and alienation. Both, men and women, look for acceptance and affirmation through all types of sexual immorality. It is only when we walk in the light, in purity that we can have true freedom. Even if we have confessed to God, when we expose our sin, confess it to others, we no longer have to live in fear of being found out. If we expose it, bring it to light, it can no longer control us, the evil one cannot blackmail or hold the secret over us.

God’s spirit enters into the world through His people, when we move in the opposite spirit. Jesus commanded us to GO and to disciple ALL the nations! He wants to teach us His principles, so we can teach others to observe all He commanded and He can have a great harvest of souls. He has called us and wants us to succeed. He just needs us to OBEY HIM!

Jesus doesn’t promise that it will be easy, He actually tells us it won’t. He doesn’t promise us comfort or ease or that we will be rich, BUT He promises to meet our needs, He will feed us, and provide shelter, although it won’t be by the world’s standards. He promises us that we WILL reach an entire generation, every creature! How do we do this? By taking up our crosses, by becoming His slaves and take leadership through serving, as slaves, as the meek, ask the humble. Scripture tells us that the meek will inherit the earth!

So I am taking up my cross, taking off my shoes, going barefoot, becoming a slave, losing my rights and WINNING the kingdom! I chose to rule and reign with Jesus!!