Will you Die to Abide?
Originally Written for and Spoken at North Star Community Church on April 17, 2025
I have recently been reminded of the power of sharing written or spoken works beyond the original receiving audience. Sometimes our words carry a message that continues to reverberate and echo as though they were shouted into a deep cavern and the vibrations took time resounding back. As I’ve been in constant observation of the world around me, I see the relevance of this message now as if it was written for such a time as this.
On stage, I asked the audience to participate with me:
Open with The Lord’s prayer (words and verse on the screen) - Matthew 6:9-13 (NKJV)
Good evening - before we start, I invite you to stand and recite the Lord’s prayer.
“Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
Thank you - you can take your seats.
Keep this line in mind, thy will be done…that will be important.
From the beginning of God’s creation of mankind in the Garden of Eden, he gave us an incredible gift of freewill to make choices. Choose his will or choose our own? Choose the tree of life, or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Choose to follow the way of Jesus or our own pursuit of happiness? We’ve been challenged in modern times to serve our own interests and choose ourselves but it has always been God’s desire that we choose Him. Yet in all his power, God never imposed his will upon us, not even upon Jesus. Living a sinless life still had to be Jesus’s choice. And to this day, it has to be of our own volition that we follow and practice the way of Jesus…
Jesus replicates this option when he invited the disciples to follow Him. They had a choice and were aware of the cultural context when he told his disciples to “Take up their cross, daily.” At the time Jesus said that, crucifixion was a well-understood form of execution. It was exceedingly brutal, public, shaming, and meant to send a message. Obey or die. So when Jesus said that, it was heavy; it meant sacrifice, it was an invitation to willful obedience, even to the point of death, to follow him with the promise that on the other side was an eternal reward that would far outweigh any of the temporary negative experiences of their current human existence. But, they had to trust Jesus, and in turn, Jesus had to trust God…how far would they go?
We talk a lot about becoming Christlike, we talk about bearing good fruit, and often these are active things, intentional doings. But have we stopped to consider how even today, becoming Christlike means following his example to the point of willful death…obedience when it actually hurts…costs us something…when it is inconvenient or simply not what we want or prefer to do.
And what does that look like in the age we live in now?
Well, I know not everyone in this room is a parent, but we’ve all been someone’s kid so I’ll go with the example of parenting. First let’s set the stage, a good parent knows at developmentally appropriate times, they give autonomy to their child i.e. free-will and a good parent also sets an example of sacrificing for the sake of others, particularly for their children and loved ones. And, sacrificial love in the way of Jesus should extend far beyond our own families. God himself sacrificed his only son, Jesus, and by extension he sacrificed himself. I have to believe the loving, good Father that God is, felt immense pain to see his son betrayed, misjudged and misunderstood, and ultimately, to see him killed even though he knew it would happen. I imagine it to be similar to a family that feels such deep sadness over the loss of a loved one who has been battling terminal illness. They know the inevitability of the death and perhaps even the approximate time until it, yet it doesn’t diminish the sorrow.
But if we’re to follow Jesus’s example of obedience to The Father, then we will need the wide range perspective to see life’s purpose is so much bigger than the here and now. The reward is eternal. So back to the question of what it looks like in modern times…maybe we are the family that doesn’t attend the party because it could lead to temptation, or choose to be content with our things to live more generously, perhaps we give grace and forgiveness instead of grudges and retaliation or any other fill in the blank thing, but by choosing differently we become the willing sacrifice. It costs us our reputation as a family, our popularity, and our pride is laid down to glorify God and walk in obedience to the call and purpose he has for us. Perhaps we say no to our young kids’ desire for smart phones, social media, or sleepovers because we know and trust what is best for them. Those decisions mean our children are also sacrificed alongside us and sometimes it hurts. But, it’s in those moments when we ask our children to sacrifice for their good- echoes how God first asked us to sacrifice for our own…it’s personal and intimately tuned to what God knows will draw you further and deeper to Him and it will likely be the hardest things to give up. God knows us like we know our own kids.
Along that line, How many of us, you can raise your hand or not, have said, “I would die for my kids,” or someone we love? Now, how many of us have said, “I would change for my kids or my loved ones?” Would we choose to live differently? Would we live in obedience to God and by which we surrender our will, to His will? We still actually DIE but that kind of death, death to self, takes on an entirely different meaning.
At the last supper, Jesus modeled what death to ourselves might look like in a daily, practical sense. The hard conversations with Judas or Peter didn’t kill him. They were the right thing to do and the loving thing to do. They were honest conversations. How many of our fears about following Jesus and becoming more like Him are rooted in the fear of what people might say or do when we speak truth with love, when we break generational cycles of abuse or addiction, when we make hard choices about our health or the social circles we participate in? We fear judgement, the whispers, the side eyes, or the absence of invitations - we fear change. The painfully ironic thing though, is the fear of people that holds us back from actually following God is what actually leads to our death be it literal or spiritual. The emotional pain of living in obedience and facing judgement from people or betrayal won’t physically kill us. Yes those things can deeply hurt us but living in separation from the vine, the true source of life, hurts more…hurts eternal and hurts future generations.
Again, It’s always been an invitation from God - his gift to us has been an invitation and our free will. Jesus chose to obey the will of the father in the most inconvenient time - when his life was on the line but he knew the Father’s will was of a greater good even when He would have wanted an easier way.
Jesus asked the disciples to take up their cross but he also said it as a prerequisite for us today. Matt. 10:38-39 “And whoever doesn’t take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it, and anyone who loses his life because of me will find it.” Because, ultimately a life to the fullest is never going to be based upon the will or desire of our hearts, but that of the Father. All throughout scripture, we have the invitation to join in God’s family and accept him into our hearts and lives as our Heavenly Father. We can choose to believe in his covenant love for us which is by the blood of Jesus, to trust it, and to abide in it. John 15 lays this out for us remaining connected to the vine, that vine which is Jesus himself, and by staying connected we can bear fruit. He summarized the point in verse 8, “My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples,” which we’ve already noted to be a disciple is to follow in willful and fully aware obedience even to the point of death to ourselves. And following right after, Jesus tells his disciples about what it means to have Christlike love and in John 15:12-13 he says to love as he has loved us, and that there is no greater love than to lay down our lives for another.
I spoke earlier about the Last Supper, where Jesus displayed his love and also spoke truth. All the while he was foretelling the disciples what was about to happen to him, he showed an example of laying down his life even in this moment. He held space for them to talk out their misunderstandings and questions, arguments and their disputes, while knowing he would be betrayed and killed. You won’t find any scripture with Jesus saying, “seriously, don’t you even know what’s about to happen to me, or if you only knew how I feel…” He modeled what bearing good fruit looks like, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I don’t know about you but I can’t see myself having emotional capacity for any of that if I knew my arrest and death were moments away. But, he set aside his needs for theirs…another act of sacrificial love.
Now, we enter the Garden of Gethsemane and in the Gospel accounts we see Jesus voicing his sorrow to Peter, James and John and looking to them to stay awake and pray with him, yet they fall asleep. Jesus feels the sting of this yet doesn’t sin and returns to solitude and prayer. Repeatedly praying to his Abba or Father, “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not as I will, but as your will.” “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” Imagine the trust Jesus had to have to stay the course. To feel such extreme anxiety to the point of sweating blood -which has been medically proven can occur- and resist the urge to fight or flight is beyond comprehension. Yet, he allowed himself to be betrayed, arrested for no reason, and without resistance. He even made time in the process to perform a final miraculous healing when one who was with him slashed the ear off one who was there to arrest him. Jesus touched his ear, healed it, and then told his disciples essentially to stand down, and they deserted him. Scripture tells us Jesus knew he could call on his Father and 12 legions of angels to end all of this, yet he didn’t. He trusted his father and the assignment or cup, he was given and he willingly took it…upon the cross, he said, “it is finished,” died and released his spirit…Jesus took it all the way.
God’s as creator and our good, Heavenly Father is the connecting thread from beginning through the end, in Genesis 1 “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” to the last words of Revelation, “the grace of the Lord Jesus be with everyone, Amen.” His people were and still are worth saving even at the exorbitant price - the life of his son.
So what is good about Good Friday?
The example set by Jesus of Trust in a Good Father
Trust in the promise of our forgiveness of sins through the blood of Jesus
A blood covenant love from the Father to us
The many examples of how to display Christlike love
The autonomy we have to choose a real and eternal life with Jesus
God and Jesus never asked us to do something they weren’t willing to do first. Our kids and this next generation are looking to us to do the same. Lead by example, lay down our preferences or veils of perfection, our pride, our worldly ambitions and be willing to follow Jesus wherever he invites us. They are looking for both bold and ordinary examples, integrity in our daily walk with Jesus, to see if it’s worth it and we have a choice to bear witness that indeed it is. Jesus made it real along with many of the disciples and apostles as they gave it all to gain it all.
So, I leave you with this, will you also die to abide?
