THE HIGHEST CALL.
WRITTEN BY CHARISSA MROWKA
I was reminded today what a true joy and honor it is to die.
Today, during the 8-10 a.m. prayer set here at House Denver,
I felt a deep cry stirring within me afresh as I sang.
I felt as if each word I uttered was a song of recommitment to the things
and to the ways I have given myself over to.
There is a lifestyle that seems foolish to the world,
but is deeply beautiful and worth it to me.
To the world, it looks really strange to spend hours a day in a prayer room.
Many can’t grasp the idea that one could find true fulfillment sitting in small, not-that-awesome rooms,
singing the same songs, reading the same phrases and praying the same words over and over again.
There are a thousand other things I could be doing - a thousand exciting opportunities, quick pleasures
and flashy invitations in the world that I could be grabbing ahold of - but for me all of those other things have lost their appeal.
I have been ruined by the glory of a simple life oriented around running after the One Thing.
In the pursuit of the One thing, you must let go of many things.
In the pursuit of the One thing, there are a million deaths to self.
This is the call not many will answer. This is the narrow path not many will take.
But the call to come and die is perhaps the greatest call man can be offered.
The call to lose your life to find it is a great and glorious call.
The call to lose your life and know His, is the ultimate glory.
Sitting in a small prayer room like this certainly isn’t the sole nor whole definition of losing your life,
but there is something this lifestyle begins to work into you that will infiltrate and pour over into
your desires, your ways of thinking, your definitions of success and fulfillment, and the things you orient your life around.
The thing this lifestyle has given me is the living evidence that every sacrifice I have made
and every dream I have given up was absolutely and abundantly worth it.
I have tapped into the place of the superior pleasure, the ultimate treasure…
which is knowing Christ Jesus.
I have begun to feel the happy and holy glow of the Resurrection and the Life living in me.
There is a glorious exchange that has been offered to us: our death for His life.
2 Corinthians 4 speaks to the reality of willingly being given over to death
that the life of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal bodies.
The more we experience death in us, to us and around us,
the more we have the opportunity to experience His life in us and His power flowing through us.
If I am always operating in my own strength and my own life, how can I possibly begin to really know His?
I must die. I must let death touch me that I might experience His life.
There is a chance for this exchange not only in persecution or severe situations,
but also in the day to day ordinary moments.
Every time you choose to die to your flesh, every time you choose to forgive,
every time you choose to be weak, every time you choose to keep silent, every time you choose the desires of the Spirit over the desires of the flesh
and every time you choose the right to know Him over the right to express self, you get the treasure of experiencing His life being manifest in you.
Oh to know Him and the power of His resurrection.
Oh to share in His sufferings and become like Him in his death…
That by any means possible, I might attain the resurrection.
(Philippians 3:10-11)
Knowing Him, not just in the sense of knowing what His experiences were like 2,000 years ago, but joining Him in those very experiences.
Knowing Him involves the fellowship of suffering, loss, betrayal, counting the cost, choosing obedience, serving, emptying yourself, and going lower still.
Philippians 2 tells us though Jesus was in the form of God,
He didn’t count equality with God as something to be grasped.
Rather, He emptied Himself and was obedient to the Father to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Have you become obedient to the point of death?
Every little death to self, every sacrifice, every surrender is worth it.
The more you give up the more you come to know that everything is really nothing next to Him.
The riches of this life, even the most precious ones, are still rubbish compared to Him.
Every right we may have is garbage compared to the right to become like Him.
If a man offered for love all the wealth of his house,
he would be utterly despised
(Song of Solomon 8:7)
Let us strive to be obedient to the point of death.
Let us choose death to self, for the glory that follows suffering is great.
Where there is truly death, resurrection is sure to follow.
Where we become like Him in His death, we get to know Him and the power of His resurrection.
