Our Postures—Part Six

Biblically, a posture is a physical position in worship that reflects the heart's attitude of reverence towards God and our dependence on Him. At the beginning of this year, the Lord impressed on us that there are six postures—six mindsets—that He wants to undergird and inform our prayers for Forgiving Forward.

All for God’s Glory
Jesus Focused
Shepherd Led
Gospel-Centric
Abiding Trust
Self Denied

This is the sixth in a series of blogs unpacking each of the postures that guide the ministry of Forgiving Forward. The sixth posture is:

Self Denied

He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.

Matthew 10:39

Could it be that the biggest challenge to God's glory and position in our lives is us? Is it possible that we have met our own worst enemy, and it’s the dude or dudette staring back at us in the mirror?

“I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to Him.”

Charles H. Spurgeon

At the core of the original sin in Genesis 3 was the lure of self-determination, of choosing our will over God’s will, our choice over God’s command. With two bites of the fruit, the flesh of mankind was born, which spread into the DNA of every one of Adam’s descendants, all the way down to you and me. The flesh is the spiritual force that dwells within us which is anti-God and produces sin in us. As long as our earthsuits are breathing, even after we move from death to Life in Jesus, the flesh entices us to continue to eat from the same tree our first father tasted. And we do—constantly—and everything becomes about ME, what I want, what I think I need over God’s will. It always ends with the same results—Death! Not the same spiritual death Adam and Eve experienced, but relational death. We are still God’s children, but we lose the joy of His Life in us.

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

Luke 9:23

The call of discipleship is to deny ourselves. The word translated “deny” is a command that means to disown; to renounce, to disregard self-sovereignty. It indicates a decisive and complete rejection of self-rule. To deny ourselves is to say “no” to our will and “yes” to God’s will. It is to recognize, in His sovereignty and wisdom, that God knows more than we do, and His plans are always best. If we want to be disciples of Jesus, we must deny ourselves. Simply put, a disciple is one who submits to the authority of Jesus in everything.

And He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and He knelt down and began to pray, saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.”

Luke 22:41-42

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus modeled self-denial for us? Think about it. Jesus is the only man born on earth who is not the son of Adam; He is the Son of God. Although He was sinless and perfect in every way, His earthsuit, inherited from His mother, still yearned to have its own way. Yet, on the night of His betrayal, as He struggled under the shadow of the impending Cross, fully aware of what He was about to suffer, He made the decisive and ruthless decision to choose the Father’s will over His own. His self-denial purchased our freedom and left us a model we are commanded to follow. Only when we follow His example of self-denial will we experience the freedom He died to bring us.

Paul emphasized this in Philippians 2:5-11

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We are called to have the same mindset that Jesus had. We are called to empty ourselves of our own desires for self-fulfillment, surrendering to His will for the sake of others. Therefore, our posture is to bend our knee to the will of One who is our Life. In fact, the posture of Self Denied is the natural outcome of the other 5 postures.

All for God’s Glory means I’m not for my glory.
Jesus Focused means I’m not me focused.
Shepherd Led, means I’m not setting the pace.
Gospel-Centric, means I’m not me centric.
Abiding trust means I’m not trusting in myself.

What Self Denied means for us is that we don’t make decisions for Forgiving Forward or anything else in our lives. What we want doesn’t matter. It’s not our ministry. We are simply caretakers of the ministry God has entrusted to us. Dead men don’t decide. “We have died, and our life is hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3) As His disciples, we choose to die to ourselves daily so that His Life will live through us. So we constantly ask, “Jesus, what are You doing and how can we be a part of it? What do you want us to say or do?” We do so individually, as a couple, and as a ministry. What we want yields to His plan as our will surrenders to His Will. If He says go, and we want to stay, we go. If He says stay, and we want to go, we stay. With Self Denied, we kneel at the foot of the Cross humbly waiting for our next assignment.

“There was a day when I died, utterly died, died to George Muller, his opinions, preferences, tastes, and will, died to the world, its approval or censure, died to the approval or blame even of my brethren and friends, and since then I have studied only to show myself approved unto God."

George Muller

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