Life Lover

The most painful thing you can ever do is idolize life itself. When we idolize life, we do one of two things. We either idolize the concept of "life" as a whole, and play it safe, trying to protect ourselves from pain and persecution in order to preserve our time on earth here for ourselves and our benefit. We become afraid of risk and afraid of death. We desire, above all other things, to live. That urge to hold back and preserve our fragile life here instead of keeping our eyes on Heaven will be the death of us spiritually, because "he who tries to save his life will lose it."

The second thing we do when we idolize life is that we idolize what we consider to be our own life. We start to believe that we have some sort of entitlement to the earthly things that we desire and we hold so tightly to those desires that God will eventually have to tear them from our hands, because they get in the way of His plans for our lives. Our lives are His. He bought them. He paid for them. So the pain comes in when we only surrender parts of our lives, while refusing to sacrifice all of them. This will wreck us emotionally, mentally, spiritually. We will give, but we won't move when we're called to move if we think it will take away from what we want. You cannot offer yourself as a partial sacrifice. Offering only half of yourself leads to half of you burning with holy fire and half of you burning with desires that aren't necessarily for you. God will continue to push at you, calling you to surrender, and the more you refuse sacrifice, the more the pain builds.

Don't idolize this life, this vapor. Don't try to hold tight to what you want your portion to be. Hands that are full can't reach for more, and there is so much more to take hold of. Offer your whole self, and glory will come.