A New Year and Self-Denial

It’s a new year. To be honest, I don’t feel like I have much to look forward to, and I don’t look back on the last year with much fondness. It was full of more suffering, struggles, and sin than I would care to admit.

This is not the way I saw my life going.

Perhaps that's the most discouraging thing as I look back on the past year and forward to this new year. As I battle several chronic infections, my life is significantly slower and drastically different than I ever imagined my 20s to be. Over the past few years, I've experienced the death of many dreams.

I knew that dying to self was part of the Christian life. However, I envisioned self-denial as serving on the foreign mission field or in full-time ministry. That's what sacrifice for the Kingdom looks like, right? But dying to self the difficult, daily battle of chronic illness, where a majority of my life is spent resting, taking supplements, enduring treatment regiments, or cooking food I can eat? No way!

As I look back, was my year wasted? It sometimes feels that way to me. But is it wasted when pastors are locked in solitary confinement for their faith? Is it wasted when a saint is bedridden the rest of their life? When a missionary family has to flee the country they were called to, for fear of their lives?

Not in God’s economy. How can this be?

Because God is the process of redeeming each and every moment.

Yes, even your most difficult circumstances are being redeemed! We see examples of this in Scripture:

When Joseph was unjustly put in prison, God used it to save the lives of many (Gen. 50:20).
When Paul was stuck in a cell, he said that it helped to spur on the gospel (Phil. 1:12-13).
When Job's life and family were taken from him, it brought Him to know God more deeply (Job 42:1-6).
When David was fleeing for his life, he experienced God as his Refuge in deeper ways than ever before (Ps. 3).
When Ruth becomes a young widow, God uses her re-marriage to Boaz to graft her into the lineage of Christ (Ruth 4:13-17).

I wrestle with the kind of cross-bearing I'm currently called to carry, questioning what God is doing, because I don't understand it at all. But this time as I processed, the line from All I Have is Christ rang in my head:

“Now Father use my ransomed life in anyway you choose.”

The truth that my life is not my own repeated in my head. When I surrendered my life to Christ, I agreed to let Him have complete control, and to use me however He desires. Whatever He chooses for my life is best, even if it contradicts what I think is best. God is using my seemingly "wasted" circumstances to teach me greater self-denial, reliance on Him, and trust in His goodness. I must frequently release my dreams and desires for His, so that I can say with Paul,

"But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ..." Phil. 3:7-8

This is what I have to look forward to in 2018. Not more self-promotion, success, accomplished plans, or fulfilled dreams. Not an exciting or fun year, as I would want. But there is something deeper and long-lasting. My greatest reward is to know God more deeply. And that comes through the road of self-denial. As I do that in the unique ways God has called me to, I find that all my temporary successes were nothing, and that Christ is everything.