Leaving Things Behind

There’s nothing quite like preparing to move overseas that brings you face-to-face with your latent materialism. I’ve never been one of those people who have to have the latest and greatest gadgets or the trendiest clothes or the fanciest car. In fact, in most cases I’d rather not have those things. And aside from my one weakness of books, I don’t really feel the need to accumulate a lot of material goods that would be of value. So you can imagine my surprise when trying to fit my tangible belongings into four suitcases prompted a swelling of possessiveness over stuff and sadness at having to leave so much of it behind.

As I have packed and repacked with each changing season over the course of the year-and-a-half since I’ve known I was getting ready to move (a period lasting a year longer than I originally thought), many people have good-naturedly suggested I just leave practically everything behind and buy everything new once I arrive. In a way, this seems like the most practical solution—and I’m all for practicality!—so why does that suggestion increase my feelings of stress rather than diminish them?

Because I love my stuff. I love my clothes; I love my books; I love my piano music and my cross-stitch supplies and my notebooks and pens. There’s nothing particularly special about most of that, but they’re mine. I don’t want new stuff; I want my stuff. And as I’m facing an exciting transition to a completely new world, I find myself desperate to hold on to things that are familiar and comfortable. Like I realized after talking with a married friend about her experience, I want our new home to feel like it’s mine and his, not someone else’s, and part of that for me means bringing things that I have a history with into our home.

Since this trans-Atlantic move is going to be one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done, even as much as God has prepared me for it throughout my life thus far, it’s not unreasonable to want some tangible piece of constancy in the midst of all the change—as positive and exciting as it will be. But the deep feelings of attachment to stuff serve as a signal to examine my heart in light of the perspective Jesus instructs me to have as His follower.

He tells us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19-20, ESV). It’s easy when reading these verses to focus on the dependent clauses (the parts talking about moths, rust, and thieves) and think that the point is something like this: We shouldn’t bother gathering stuff here on earth because it’s going to be destroyed; the better strategy to get stuff is to focus on stuff that’s going to last.

But I think the real point of this passage comes in the next verse where Jesus tells us why we shouldn’t lay up treasures on earth: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21, ESV). It’s not about making sure we have stuff that lasts. In fact, it’s not really about having stuff at all; it’s about making sure our heart isn’t captured by stuff instead of by our Savior.

When I think about the prospect of leaving literally all my earthly possessions behind to marry my fiancé, I realize that, despite being overjoyed and relieved at finally being his wife, deep down I know I would also miss what I left behind. And while he graciously understands my need for having some tangible attachments to my past, l want to be constantly evaluating my heart to make sure that I am not attached to stuff more than to him.

If that is the posture I should take regarding my earthly husband, how much more, then, do I need to be evaluating my heart to make sure that my affections for my heavenly Husband are not overshadowed by my affections for things? As Jesus goes on to say a few sentences later, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money [Greek mammon, a Semitic word for money or possessions]” (Matthew 6:24, ESV). Even though I don’t spend a lot of my time focused on accumulating possessions, they still have a strong hold on my affections, and if I’m honest, when I think about the other eventual transition to another completely new world—the world of eternity with God—I find myself saddened at the thought of leaving behind the things that are familiar and comfortable.

Will I be overjoyed and relieved just to be finally in the physical presence of Jesus? Absolutely. And I’m fairly certain that when I get there “the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace” and I will not miss any of these temporary things that I call “mine” here on earth.[1] But the issue I—and we all—should be concerned with is not our reaction then but our perspective now. We are called to be growing each day in the likeness of and love for Christ, and that means gradually loosening our hold on the temporal things that have no eternal significance.

One thing that has encouraged me in this area is the song by Michael Card called “Things We Leave Behind” that talks about the freedom that comes from relinquishing our grasp on earthly things in our possession. I encourage you to take a listen here. I first heard this song around the time my relationship with my now fiancé started, coming with the realization of what saying yes to a life with him would entail. And as it became clear that this was what God has for me, this song helped me embrace the uncomfortable process of sanctification (growing in Christlikeness) in the area of being captivated more by Christ and His plan for my life than by stuff.

Have I arrived? Absolutely not. But by God’s grace and patience and through the power of His Spirit, He is gradually chipping away the attachments that are holding me back from being more fully enthralled by Him. I challenge you to examine your own heart in this area as well. Are there areas of your life where you are holding on to stuff more than you’re holding on to the Savior? Along with Michael Card, I’ll remind us all: “We can’t imagine the freedom we find from the things we leave behind.”

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[1] “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus” by Helen H. Lemmel

The Self-Controlled Savior

Just as Luke chapter 2 is a go-to passage around Christmastime, so the Gospels’ accounts of the days surrounding Jesus’ death and resurrection tend to get a little more exposure during Easter week. Pastors preach on the Last Supper, on Pilate’s trial of Jesus, on the crucifixion, and on the victorious rising of our Savior. But throughout Jesus’ final days there’s a thread that doesn’t get emphasized a lot yet is well worth our attention. It’s a thread that has always stuck out to me because it is such a blatant reminder of the vast chasm that exists between God’s perfection and my lack thereof.

You see, I’m the kind of person who scores really high marks in the “C” (“Correct”) category of the “DISC” personality test. (For those who know about DISC, I score equally high in S, so that’s fun! [insert “zany face” emoji here]) Anyway, that basically means I care about being accurate, about finding not just any answers but the correct answers, and about pushing back against ignorance in myself and in others. Want to make me really frustrated? Put me in a situation where I overhear someone asking a question I know the answer to—or worse, answering a question incorrectly—but where I can’t give the correct answer. It’s pretty much the worst. Especially if it involves people acting on said incorrect information to their detriment, such as missing the bus because they thought it ran at 1:30 instead of at 1:00.

Don’t get me wrong, this personality bent is the one God gave me, so it’s not what makes me imperfect—my inborn sin nature does that!—but because of that sinful nature, this aspect of my personality can be twisted into producing ungodliness. It can feed my pride when I care more about being correct than about anything else. It can make me defensive when others think I’ve done something wrong (both when I haven’t and when I have). It can make it difficult for me to display the fruit of the Spirit, particularly that part called self-control.

And that’s where I see the perfection of Jesus shine so brightly in the time surrounding His death. We get the first glimpse of His self-control during this period when He is arrested in the garden of Gethsemane. He rebuked one of His disciples (probably Peter) for cutting off a man’s ear while trying to defend Him, and He asked the rhetorical question, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (Matthew 26:53, ESV). Knowing who Jesus was, Peter knew the answer was that of course He could call on God to rescue Him from what was about to happen. But Jesus made a point to tell Peter that such a course of action was not the Plan. He had the self-control to submit to the Father’s will rather than exercise His own power in self-defense.

The Garden of Gethsemane, 2019

Once Jesus was arrested and brought before the high priest and the rest of the Jewish council, He was accused by false witnesses of blasphemy. “And the high priest stood up and said, ‘Have you no answer to make? What is it that these men testify against you?’ But Jesus remained silent” (Matthew 26:62-63a, ESV). Don’t breeze past that statement. He remained silent. He wasn’t just being accused; He was being falsely accused. And it wasn’t an accusation of some “small” sin like theft or lying; He was being accused of blasphemy. God Himself was being accused of sacrilege against God.

Talk about something being incorrect! That would be like me actively honoring my parents and then having people accuse me of not loving them, of not even belonging to them, of hating them. You better believe I would tell those accusers how wrong they were! And I’d probably point to all the evidence that proved they were wrong and show how their conclusion was completely illogical. But Jesus didn’t do that. And what makes His silence even more astounding is that He would have been completely justified in speaking up.

He’s God for cryin’ out loud. He’s completely holy, completely perfect. There was absolutely no basis for the accusations being made against Him. It’s not like He was a guilty party trying to make excuses and defend His behavior to those who saw through it. No, He was completely innocent and was so far removed from the sin they were accusing Him of that His life actually displayed the exact opposite of it. And yet He remained silent. He did not defend Himself. What self-control!

But the high priest wasn’t having it. He finally insisted, “I adjure you by the living God [oh the irony!], tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew 26:63b). After all these false accusations had been made, now Jesus was presented with a wide-open door to set the record straight. He was given an opportunity on a silver platter to provide everyone with the correct information. And still, He didn’t defend Himself. Instead, He gave a somewhat cryptic response that was at least enough for the high priest to understand that Jesus was claiming to be something the priests obviously didn’t believe Him to be. So then the priests joined the false witnesses in accusing Him of blasphemy, and the spitting and beating began.

But the physical abuse wasn’t all Jesus had to endure. He was taunted, made fun of for claiming to be God. “And some slapped him, saying, ‘Prophecy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?’” (Matthew 26:67b-68, ESV). I’m reading this, and everything in me wants Him to say, “Okay, you wanna know who struck me? I’ll tell you. It was Josiah the mason, son of Levi and Elizabeth, from the village just north of Jerusalem” and then go on to tell everything the guy ever did to show them just how wrong they were and prove to them that He was God. But He had more self-control than that.

Instead, He took all the beating and the taunting and then went through the whole thing again before Pilate, the Roman governor. More accusations. More beating. More taunting. And still He gave no defense and made His way to the hill where He would be crucified. As if He hadn’t suffered enough, the people continued to taunt Him while He hung on the cross: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40b, ESV). He totally could have. He could have ended it all any moment He chose. And He would have been 100% justified in doing so. He was suffering the greatest injustice in the history of the universe—the only completely innocent, completely perfect Person being treated like the worst of criminals.

Golgotha, the hill where Jesus was crucified, 2019

But instead of coming down from the cross, instead of defending His Name, instead of obliterating the ignorance that was swirling around him and leaving every person there without a shadow of a doubt Who He was, He had the self-control to endure to the end so that the Plan He had set in motion since the beginning of time would unfold just as it was supposed to. All the physical pain, all the emotional pain, all the spiritual pain, the utter anguish that would leave any of the rest of us at our wit’s end and desperate to have everything corrected—none of it was a match for His self-control.

But we shouldn’t be surprised at that, really. After all, the fruit of the Spirit comes from the Spirit (a.k.a. God), from the very essence of His nature. We think of that connection often when it comes to love and peace and goodness, but not so much when it comes to self-control. Yet here in this period of Jesus’ life, we see on full display the self-control element of God’s nature. And in displaying such remarkable self-control, Jesus once again gives us the picture of what a Christ-like life should be.

He didn’t just tell us to turn the other cheek without showing us what it looks like. He didn’t just tell us to persevere when others hate us and insult us because we follow Him. He showed us how to do it. And by having such self-control to stick to the Plan, He ultimately made it possible for us to become more like Him. Because without His death on our behalf, we would still be stuck in our ungodly, dishonorable lives with no hope of ever passing muster to stand before God. But thanks to our self-controlled Savior, we can be free from those shackles of nastiness that keep us separated from God.

If you’ve never recognized the hopelessness of your naturally sinful state and the strong and steady hope that is yours in Jesus through His perfect life, substitutional death, and victorious resurrection, I pray that you take some time to read one of the Gospels in the Bible (Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John). And if you have questions, I’d be more than happy to talk with you about them. I may not have all the answers, but I will seek them with you.

And if you’ve already forsaken your sin and are depending on Jesus for the abundant life with God that He provides, I pray you take some time to ponder His sacrificial self-control for you and praise Him for it—because goodness knows He deserves all the praise.