Hey Church!

As we prepare our hearts to worship together, let us meditate on the words of Romans 12:1-2: 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

It is rare to find modern faith-based motivational media that leads with “die every day.” And yet, this is the fundamental task of discipleship according to Scripture. If you want to follow Jesus, you are required to “take up your cross” (Matt. 16:24-26) and “crucify the flesh with its passions and desires” to it (Gal. 5:24). Christianity without self-denial is powerless (read 2 Tim. 3:1-5!). 

The Desert Fathers may have taken self-denial to an extreme, but no one can say they were powerless or ineffective to the Kingdom. St. Antony of Egypt (AKA St. Anthony of the Desert, or Anthony the Great) is counted as one of their greatest. His wealthy parents died when he was 20 years old, and he inherited their entire estate. Around the same time, he heard a reading of the following passage from the Gospel of Matthew.

And behold, a man came up to him, saying, “Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” And he said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” He said to him, “Which ones?” And Jesus said, “You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” When the young man heard this he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

And Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly, I say to you, only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven.

Antony believed that he was that rich man, so he took Jesus’ words quite literally and distributed all of his possessions to the poor. He went into the desert and lived a life of continual prayer in complete solitude for 35 years. His “hermitage” was described as a pit located near a cemetery. The barren landscape matched the barrenness of soul that he sought so fervently, and the cemetery pit kept death in the forefront of his mind. With little refuge from the blazing sun, he was likewise exposed in soul to “the penetrating gaze of God and God’s insistent call to change,” as one author so beautifully put it.1 

We can afford to silence our phones on the Lord’s Day. It is not a difficult thing God has called us to do. We make it feel difficult when we fail to retreat to solitary places for prayer and contemplation daily. Being a “living sacrifice,” as Paul put it, requires practice. Each and every day, just as we put away our sleep clothes and put on the attire of the day, we ought to put off our flesh and choose to follow Christ anew each morning. If we are faithful in that discipline, we will certainly gain infinitely more than we lose. 

Dying to our flesh is uncomfortable, especially when we have fallen out of practice. But it is a discomfort to which God calls us to voluntarily submit ourselves for the sake of gaining something far better than we would otherwise have: knowing Jesus and being a pure reflection of Him. We will forget the discomfort when we come to know Him in that way. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18; cf. John 16:21). 

Give Him your all this Sunday!