Agent Salazar and Col. Wexler on dying for something … (from The International)
- Agent Salazar
“Yeah, but based on everything I’ve read about you, you seem like the kind of man who aspired to die for something more than this.”
- Col. Wexler
“Well, this is the difference between truth and fiction. Fiction has to make sense.”
Why do we sometimes we lose our “zing,” the feeling that life is significant, and that, in fact, we are significant in the plans of the true Master of the Universe?
Our courage melts into bravado, our faith descends to sight, living in view of forever is something that will come later.
I believe we lose our edge for living when we don’t live with something to die for.
- (Matthew 16:24-26 ESV)
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
When we follow Jesus our world changes.
We lose “our world” and live in his world. The comparison is that even if we could carry out our plans to the fullest and have life exactly as we planned that it would be no profit because we gave away our soul, our opportunity to connect with what is truly “the next level,” that is, life as God plans it.
Dying is the new living.
When Jesus Christ calls us to die, he is really calling us to live. We die to a world that we plan, where we try to maintain control, make life safe, more comfortable, more fun (as we see it).
But we have a huge problem.
It is all our creation and conception. We have given birth to a world that can extend no further than what we can imagine, a world limited to our resources that stands still before eternity rather than has eternity as its context.
- Ephesians 3:20-21 (MSG)
God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!
So who am I going to live for? Who am I going to die for? Whose world will I choose to live in?
That’s what I’m wondering …
