In teaching us about the depth of submission that He wants in our lives, the Lord is saying, “Love Me at your own risk.” This is not only true of loving the Lord but it seems to be true of loving one another.
Think of all that a person normally would give in love for his family. When a young man is courting a wife, and if the call of God is upon him, he should warn her about it. He should tell her, “Love me at your own risk.” She should be made aware of the sacrifice it may mean.
The submission that the Lord is requiring of us to Him and to one another puts us in another category of relationship that people have previously known nothing about. This is the jeopardy of submission. The enemy preys upon us because our relationships are not normal by the world’s thinking. We have concepts of what seems to be the usual and normal way of life, and when we begin walking with the Lord, we are aware that we live in a state of crisis day in and day out. We decide to love the Lord, knowing that we are submitting to Him at the risk of our own lives.
In Matthew 16:25 the Lord said, “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.” Paul said that he was always delivered unto death (II Corinthians 4:11). We are continually in jeopardy.
Acts 15 tells about certain men who “hazarded their lives” for the gospel of the Word. Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church (and Jerusalem of course), to choose men from among them to send to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas—Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brethren, and they sent this letter by them, “The apostles and the brethren who are elders, to the brethren in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia who are from the Gentiles, greetings. Since we have heard that some of our number to whom we gave no instruction have disturbed you with their words, unsettling your souls, it seemed good to us, having become of one mind, to select men to send to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Acts 15:22–26.
Literally, this statement, “Men who have risked their lives,” means, “Men who have given over their lives.” The King James Version says, “hazarded their lives.” Those men are examples of loving the Lord and doing so at their own risk.
I am always concerned for people who put their money in various projects that others are carrying before the Lord. When the integrity of another’s walk changes, the blessing of the Lord may shift; and the immature babes can be hurt very deeply. Nevertheless, I realize that you love Him at your own risk. You obey Him at your own risk. There always seems to be some risk involved. You must be ready to lose your life in being obedient to Him; the price involved must not matter to you. Only the fact that you are doing the will of God is important. You might think that you cannot afford to live your life for Him. However, you can never afford not to do the will of the Lord. The will of God is not so expensive as disobedience. You cannot afford to keep anything that He requires—even if it is to lay your very life down for His name’s sake.
We must come to a new realization of submission. When God brings forth the Isaac of our dreams, the fulfillment of hopes and visions that could last a lifetime, we still must be dedicated to stand aside, if it is not going to be what God wants it to be. We must cry with a whole heart, “Slay it, Lord. Kill it. Do not let it live in Thy sight. Do not let there come forth in this day the distorted, the weird, and the grotesque—that which started in You but went astray to become instruments in the hands of an antichrist in the earth. Do not let prophets come forth whose hearts turn and stray from what You want them to be. O God, let us not live one day longer if our hearts are not wholly set on You.”
Love Him, but love Him at your own risk, remembering what Paul wrote in Philippians 2:17, 18. But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all. And you too, I urge you, rejoice in the same way and share your joy with me. In verse 25, Paul said, But I thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus, my brother and fellow-worker and fellow-soldier… Fellow-soldier is a Greek word that translates to a word which came out of World War I—“buddy.” Buddies lived together, faced death together, risked their lives together, and watched their buddies die.
According to Paul, Epaphroditus was his buddy. Paul said, … my brother and fellow-worker and fellow-soldier (“he is my buddy”), who is also your messenger and minister to my need; because he was longing for you all and was distressed because you had heard that he was sick. For indeed he was sick to the point of death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore I have sent him all the more eagerly in order that when you see him again you may rejoice and I may be less concerned about you. Therefore receive him in the Lord with all joy, and hold men like him in high regard; because he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was deficient in your service to me. Philippians 2:25–30. Imagine Epaphroditus, himself an apostle, risking his life to bring food, a few garments, and some meager necessities to a shivering apostle in a Roman dungeon. He did this for a man who was facing illness, hunger, and cold. He risked his own life, and under that stress he was close to death himself. In the letter that came from Jerusalem and went throughout the Gentile churches, Paul said, “These are men who risked their lives for the gospel’s sake.” For the Lord they took the risk.
Every one of us must enter into this highest standard of discipleship. We should not need to be entreated in order that our feelings are not hurt. We should not always be babied along, constantly convinced not to abandon the way. There should be no threat of instability in our spirits to endanger our walk with the Lord. There should be no margin to watch, no danger point at which we would draw away from a walk with the Lord. In each one of us there should be a response to the Lord that shows we are willing to hazard our lives for His sake. We must have the dedication to do whatever the Lord tells us to do and to be willing to love Him at our own risk.
Submit to Him, even if serving Him and doing His will means that you lose your life. Hold nothing back from Him. Love Him and serve Him, not for what you can gain personally, but for what you can do for Him. Love the Lord just for the privilege of loving Him. Serve Him with all your heart and ask nothing in return. Your walk with God is not based on how much He will bless and help you, or what He will do for you in position or prestige, but it is based on your service and love to God. These are the hazards of submission.
Many are now coming forth with this deep love of the Lord. It is our submission to the Lord that eliminates other conflicting loyalties, so that our hearts and minds are without duplicity. This walk with God is the order of the pierced ears—God’s love slaves who have gone as far as would normally be required of anyone. We are like the slave described in Exodus 21:6, whose ear was pierced with an awl upon his master’s doorpost. Likewise we say, “I will not leave your house, O Lord, I will not turn aside from serving You. I will quiet all those aching desires and ambitions. I will abandon everything of my own life for You, and I will count it all joy just to serve You, Lord.” Submission and unity are coming forth in the Body. Submission strengthens unity, and unity strengthens submission.
Let us submit to one another in the Lord with the same heart that we submit to the apostle, to the elder, or to the ministries over us. He laid His life down for us; so also we ought to be willing to lay our lives down for the brethren (I John 3:16). We accomplish much when we submit willingly to being brothers and sisters without it becoming confusion. We can submit ourselves to one another as Christ did when He washed the disciple’s feet.
Galatians 6:2 says, Bear one another’s burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ. The cross that the Lord has given a brother to bear cannot be made easier for him. The Lord orders his path. The ultimate purpose that God is working through him should never be tampered with in the least. Nevertheless, we should always be with him in spirit, bearing the burden with him. The load cannot be diminished, but we can submit our lives to help a brother walk into that which God ordains him to do and to be. We are identified as brothers, fellow-soldiers, and buddies. When the Lord puts us on a cross, it may start at noon, but we will not get off before three o’clock in the afternoon; it has to run its course. We want God to deliver us over to the deep and total submission He wants in our lives: not our definition or interpretation of it, but the relationship He wants with us. We want Him to work it in us by His Spirit. Let His word be creative, yet first devastating to everything that stands in its way—blasting out every mountain, parting every sea, but making a way for His word to have fulfillment.
Have you ever felt the Spirit of the Lord reaching into your heart, as if the hands of the Lord Himself were reaching out, saying, “Give Me more, give Me all”? It is like a hunger that is never satisfied, a thirst that is not quenched. It is the desire of the Lord to possess you, as though He were going to devour you and actually create you in His image. It is as though He would say, “Nothing of the old can remain; it must be death. You must be completely consumed. I want you completely. Submit.” Little by little you bring your reservations out of the hidden closets, giving them to the Lord, saying, “Lord, here is one more.” You dare not sin against His love. Keep bringing out your reservations until they are all before Him and everything is His.
God is jealous and He is going to consume and possess us, leaving nothing for ourselves. It is the only way we are going to possess all things. We must lay it down! We must give it up! We cannot hold out, so we fight it inch by inch as in a battle. Like Jacob, we fight it out, inch by inch, losing our territory, losing our position, losing our fortifications one by one. Like Jacob, when morning comes we will limp away from the battle completely defeated. We will limp away into a rising dawn to possess everything. As we hang on the cross of our testing, even if there are seventy legions of angels to deliver us, we hang there until our old nature is dead. We give it all to Him. We let the Spirit of the living God come upon us, that our “Yes” not be a shallow thing. We let it speak out of the depths of our spirits. We say truly these simple words, “I am Thine, O Lord; I am Thine.” We repeat again the words of the Virgin, be it done to me according to your word. Luke 1:38b.
As prophets and prophetesses, bondservants and handmaidens of the Lord, we are love slaves who do not want to count the cost. We want to submit everything to Him, even at the risk of life itself. As we enter into a testing of the cross, we must loose ourselves from every reservation of mind and spirit, from every reluctance that we might cherish deep within our heart, and from everything of self-preservation that would hold back something for ourselves.
In John 13:1 we read that Jesus, having loved His own which were in the earth, loved them unto the end. The Lord Jesus Christ never stopped loving His people. He died on the cross for them. He loved them and blessed them. He kept right on loving them. Without knowing what the future holds, we sometimes want to initiate or terminate relationships according to the circumstances of the moment or our interpretation of them. We can walk in gross confusion because we feel we have to come to some decision. We want there to be some finality to which way it is to go and what it is to do. In the final analysis, it is in His hands.
If God has said to love, then love one another. If He opens the door for you to be a blessing to one another, be that blessing. Do not allow circumstances, emotions, and problems to get in the way of it. It must be a true love. Keep loving, just like the Lord—having loved His own that were in the world, He loved them to the end. He kept right on loving them. That is what you must do.
All of us know the bitter pangs of being rejected. But I remember a dream in which the deception of Satan was so total that many came to revile me and some just turned away brokenhearted. I found myself standing out on a windswept prairie. The clouds were gray and cold, and the wind was blowing. As I stood there alone, cold and forsaken, I heard the voice of Satan saying, “Hate them!” But I could not; neither did I want to. Everyone had turned away from me, and I was simply standing with tears cold and frozen on my cheeks, weeping for them anyway, and saying, “Lord, I love them.” It sounds like a strange dream, yet it came out of something I am living. I am loving Him and serving Him at my own risk. I am ready to lay my life down for the Lord, although that is not the issue.
You must be willing to love the Lord with all your heart, regardless of what comes to pass. My love for you is not based upon your love for me. God put it in my heart to love you faithfully. I know He loves me that way. God’s people are coming into the greatest love that has existed since the days of the early Church. They will love one another completely. Strength, vigor, and masculinity is in the love that is coming. It is like the love of the Father. It is demanding, and it disciplines. It breaks your heart, and it breaks your spirit; and then it puts the Father’s heart into your heart and spirit as it should be.