by Mo Isom
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (emphasis added)
I started to think about Christ’s crucifixion. About the sacrifice of an innocent man that was made for me. About the Son of God who could have so easily put a stop to all of the pain and suffering, but who knew there was only one just way for the price of my sin to be paid, so instead took on death and chose you and me.
When God created the earth and saw that it was good, He was already authoring our stories. When He created man and woman in His own image, He delighted in the joy of one day forming us too.
When sin entered into the world and we, as humans, chose our own way rather than God’s way, we created a separation that ached Him deeply. But in spite of our rebellion, He still chose us and made a way for redemption in our stories.
When Jesus was born on this earth, fully God and fully man, God chose us as He unfolded His glory. When Christ began to walk through His life, turning from temptation and sin, He knew His faithful walk was all for the sake of choosing us, in the end.
When the cynics harassed and the jeering ensued and the doubters mocked and taunted, calling Him “King of the Jews,” Christ bore the brunt of the world turning its back on Him and still chose us despite all that we lack. As He cried out to God in the Garden of Gethsemane and the weight of what was to come forced Him to sweat blood, He begged God to reveal to Him if there was any other way. When God made clear that there was not, Jesus chose us and stayed.
When they judged Him and made the choice to crucify Him, the most excruciating and humiliating death possible, Jesus stood as an innocent man and knew what was coming. And still chose us, rather than running. As they stripped Him and beat Him and lashed the skin off His back, He hunched over that stone and chose us, and He took a beating we can hardly fathom today.
When He was exhausted, bloodied, and beaten and they forced Him to carry His own cross up the road to Calvary, He stumbled through the crowds of jaunting and jeering and chose us with every step. As they drove nails through His hands and feet and hung Him on the cross for the world to see, they challenged Him as the Son of God and dared Him to bring Himself down. But Jesus chose us, a King in a blood-soaked crown.
With His final wheezing breaths He boldly chose you as He cried out to God in heaven, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
The realization of what Jesus’s crucifixion actually looked like, and the fact that His anguish was the death that I deserved, changed everything for me. It was humbling. And crippling. And overwhelming. I realized that Christ didn’t just die for my sins, He died because of my sins. I had to understand that, personally. Or else the gospel story was always going to seem unattached from me. I was the executioner, lashing His back. Every time I chose the world over what was righteous, I was the one striking another blow. When I knowingly sinned and chose my own pleasure over honoring God, I was the one spitting on Him and mocking Him as He carried the cross. In my sin I was the one who stood, taunting Him, on the hill of Calvary. I was the one arrogantly daring Him to prove Himself and come down. I was the one blind to the fact that the death He was dying was on my behalf. It became life-shatteringly clear to me that His crucifixion changed everything. If Jesus had died in such a way to save me, who was I to be “too uncomfortable” to sacrifice my comforts for Him every day? If I longed to die to myself and be crucified with Christ, I had to be willing to wholeheartedly carry out Luke 9:23, which reads, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”
I knew that stepping away from the peer groups and physical relationships and social scenes of the life I had known would be challenging, but the sacrifice of Christ warranted a response. A true response. Because God isn’t in the business of editing behaviors. He is in the business of transforming hearts. And an effort to just edit my behaviors in response to Jesus’s sacrifice and be a “better person” was bound to leave me as bankrupt as I’d felt before when I was chasing religion. No, Jesus’s sacrifice meant something deeply significant to my heart and invited relationship that warranted a brave response. I believed that stepping out of my comfort zone and facing the scrutiny and criticism of those who didn’t understand was the least I could give as the first offering to such a merciful and selfless King. A life-praise in response to Christ’s incredible sacrifice for me.
Are You Willing?
I realized what my soul desperately needed was uninterrupted one-on-one time. A voluntary season of isolation with Jesus. That’s not to say I became a hermit and completely withdrew from everything around me, but I began to consciously rewire my mind to embrace the stillness and the silence and the loneliness as a welcomed escape with my King. To voluntarily wreck my dependence on the things I thought I needed to be happy.
I continued to work, academically. I continued to engage with my team and navigate through my physical therapy and healing. I continued to reach out to and love those around me, but I willingly turned down most extracurricular things. In such a noisy, stimulating, distracting culture, I chose to carve out time to reintroduce myself to me. I’m a firm believer that it’s essential for every follower of Christ to walk through a season of voluntary isolation with Jesus. That, to some degree, it’s necessary. To separate ourselves from the comfort of our former lives and the rhythm of our sin. Whatever that sin may be—an unhealthy relationship, a tempting or gossip-filled peer group, a drug habit or other substance abuse. God calls all of us to give up certain dependencies. To mute the noise that has filled our minds and stand still in the splendor of His presence, if just for a while, as He does necessary work within us. To flee from temptation and learn to lean into righteousness—no matter the cost. This necessary loneliness tends to be the greatest challenge for those yearning to surrender, as well as the greatest way to recognize the idols that own us.
Far too often we fall away from our faith when we realize the things between Christ and us are things we feel uncomfortable leaving. I think we’d like to believe we can find a middle ground, but compromise isn’t a currency in God’s economy. There is a deep and abiding need for commitment and consistency. Not because God presents a “list of rules” that we have to follow in order to know righteous living but because God created us, and loves us, and knows what is best for us. Sincerely. He asks us to surrender the idols that own us so we can first and foremost fulfill our hearts’ most pressing needs. The question is rarely what we think we should give up. We all have things in our life we know we need to surrender. You probably have something sitting on the forefront of your mind right this minute as you read. The question God truly wants to know is Are you willing?
I’ve found that God communicates with each of us uniquely. Conviction makes us aware of our sin struggles, but it’s the still, small voice of the Spirit within us that invites us to surrender those things. It’s hard to explain what it feels like when God draws something to our attention or places a calling on our hearts. I find His guidance in the Word, I find it through constant prayerful dialog, I find it in the words of those around me who are rooted in Truth and who offer guidance to me. It’s not as though I need to hear God speak in some booming, audible voice in order for me to know it’s Him. It’s when I search for His wisdom in the tiniest things that I begin to feel Him, deeply. I can recognize when God is calling me to do something because, generally, it is an idea or a thought I would never have on my own. A feeling or a motivation to do something that is so far outside of what is comfortable for me, or what our society deems “normal,” that it would be easy to ignore or dismiss.
It takes a good deal of discernment to recognize what is a true calling, but the more I’ve grown in my relationship with God and the more I have made the sacrifices He asks of me, the more I have been rewarded and seen the fruits of His grace. His voice becomes clearer in our lives wh
en we know Who we are listening for. It’s up to us to close off the noise of the world around us and to begin to listen carefully.
As for me, stepping into such a season of focus unmasked my biggest idol quickly.
9
Wreck My Obsession
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matt. 22:37–39, emphasis added).
This was the first passage I came across after reading Crazy Love by Francis Chan and, as a result, consciously decided I wanted to begin approaching Scripture differently. I wanted to embrace it for its black-and-white, raw and real, heart-wrecking meaning. I wanted to trust that the Bible was life-breathed. Even though it was complex, even though it was daunting, there was a King-spoken peace in my heart that told me I didn’t need all of the answers immediately in order to trust there was holy truth in the pages of God’s story. I wanted to trust that every word carried purpose and power, and to stop rationalizing simpler or era-adjusted meaning out of verses I found hard to understand or believe. I had spent too many years going through the motions and glazing past the words and mindlessly memorizing the passages I cared to apply to my life. So much of the Bible was familiar from being “churched,” but I couldn’t have honestly told you why it was personally supposed to matter to me or how it was supposed to impact my life. Up until that point the Bible had served as more of a motivational quote book for me. I had listened to everyone else’s interpretations or thoughts on the Scriptures but had never actually taken the initiative to study through things personally or allow God to speak to me through what I now understood was a great love letter He had written me. To be honest, up until that point I saw the Word as a source I could thumb through for Scripture that felt good and fit my needs and sounded strong enough for me to share in a Facebook status or on my Twitter feed.
But now I was gasping for truth and the holy Word was what my soul yearned desperately to breathe. I was starving for more of Jesus. Hungry to know what guidance was actually held in the Word that for so long had seemed unfamiliar to me. And my insatiable hunger for Truth, in its most raw and naked meaning, led me straight to a verse I had listened to so many times before but never truly heard. A verse about loving the Lord with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind. A verse about loving, wholeheartedly, the King who had loved me first.
It had been about six months since my return to school. Six months of recovery that had seen the healing of my stutter, the strengthening of my body, clearance from the neurologist, and a strenuous journey back into athletic fighting form. In God’s immaculate sense of timing, those six months had also welcomed a stint training with the U-23 US Women’s National Team. I had prayed they wouldn’t call me up for a camp while I was recovering. The program was fiercely competitive. If they had called while I was injured and I had to turn down an invitation to compete, that would have been the nail in my coffin with the team. Call it what you want, coincidence or irony or a perfectly orchestrated God-wink, but it was less than one week after I was finally cleared by my neurologist that my phone rang while I was studying in the school library. It was a representative from the US Women’s National Team. They hadn’t been made aware of my injuries, but were pleased to hear my acceptance after inviting me out to train with the U-23s in Portland for a week.
I didn’t have much time to try to prepare to compete in top form, but I still made my way to the West Coast and spent a week training alongside women who now hoist a World Cup trophy. Alex Morgan, Kelley O’Hara, Christen Press, Tobin Heath. Little did I know the girls I was learning and growing with would go on to represent our country and dominate the international stage in 2015.
It felt, once again, like I was drinking water through a fire hose as every day opened new doors for all the Lord was downloading into my heart and teaching me. Like one of those awkward teenage growth spurts that happen far faster than your clothes can keep up with, my spiritual growth reminded me of my physical growth in the seventh grade. That year I had grown seven inches in one school term. The growth was great, a sign that I was thriving and healthy, but that didn’t stop every inch of me from aching—my knees, my back, my neck. And now the ache was in my heart, my pride, and my unearthed dependencies.
It was somewhat overwhelming. I was grateful that I was growing so quickly in my understanding and my relationship with Christ, but I hadn’t expected His pursuit of my heart to be so unrelenting. He had asked for all of my heart, all of my soul, and all of my mind, and He wasn’t subtle in digging out any deep-rooted thing that was distracting me from understanding that verse in its full and abounding context. God continued to challenge me. He continued prompting surrender and, I realized in my knee-jerk moments of resistance, He was unearthing the idols that owned me.
One idol I quickly realized owned more of me than I wanted to admit was my need for the adoration and affirmation I received from men. As far back as high school, it was something I craved. Even further back than that, I’d yearned for my dad’s praise. I realized that, in college, I’d always had a boyfriend or a guy I was interested in. In my deepest seasons of wandering, I’d relied on value from a sexual fix.
Over the course of several years I’d developed a dependence on the praise and worth men gave me. There was something about their pining that made me feel powerful. There was something rewarding in knowing I could tease or please or even control a man with my beauty. But what I rationalized as innocent and fun and feminine I began realizing was actually where I’d consistently turned to find value and company and fulfillment. I could feel the Spirit starting to stir something within me. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, but I did know I was being prompted to hand over that deep, longing need. So my mind went to work trying to figure out exactly what God was asking of me, and it didn’t take long before I realized that He meant all of my heart quite literally.
Kissless Till Next Christmas
At the start of the new year, my heart came back to the concept of voluntary wreckage and I suddenly found a radical thought popping into my mind. I dismissed it immediately, but this particular idea hung around. I hadn’t forgotten what God had begun stirring in my heart a few months before, and the very clear Scripture I had been focused on, but this particular idea felt big. And undesirable. And intimidating.
Try not to share even a kiss with anyone for a year.
I’ll be the first to proclaim that God has a wonderful sense of humor, but I wasn’t laughing at that one. I was a twenty-one-year-old entering my senior year of college and the first argument I thought of was, What if I meet someone along the way? I knew God had called me to unearth and surrender my need for affirmation from men, but I wasn’t expecting Him to call me into an intentional season of singleness at such an inopportune time—and especially not for so long.
I came up with every excuse in the book. My heart wanted to welcome God’s glory voluntarily, but my brain wanted to talk me out of it when it was inconvenient for my story. I grappled back and forth with the thought and kept trying to shake it. I refused to take it in prayer to Him, because I was convinced that if I just didn’t acknowledge it, it would go away. But God knew whom He was working with; He knew my stubborn heart. So, as I was loading up my car to head back to Baton Rouge for spring term, He smacked some sense into me with a clear sign.
As I walked upstairs to the kitchen to say goodbye to my mom, I noticed a sermon she was watching on TV. The minister was preaching on the practice of spiritual fasting. It was a new concept to me. I hadn’t heard much about it and hadn’t come across it in my readings. It certainly wasn’t something that my family had ever actively practiced when I was growing up. I had heard of fasting from food and drink, but a disciplined spiritual fast was something totally unfamiliar to me.
I stood in the den staring at the screen and was captivated by the preacher’s words. I started asking
my mom question after question about the concept. What was a spiritual fast? Where does it talk about it in the Bible? Why is it done? Is it done with more than just food? How long do people generally fast? What’s the point, and how would it help someone grow spiritually? My mom tried her best to answer all of my questions, but I could feel a flame of curiosity being fanned in me and I was eager for more knowledge. I was hungry to know what this man was talking about and how it pertained to me.
It wasn’t long into my drive back to the bayou that I found myself in prayer.
What do you want from me, Lord?
What are You asking for here?
I have been faithful, I have been following You, and I have been disciplined.
I’ve already sacrificed my friend group, my social scene, and my relationships.
I know You’re doing work in me, but what more would You have me give?
I’ve come to learn, in my spiritual walk, to never expect an immediate response. Patience is key when you are searching for answers. Key to a balanced sense of discernment. That’s why it stunned me when, as quickly as I had cried out, He flooded my mind with an immediate response.
I love you. I am jealous for you. I want to be the relationship you fully choose.
You are mine and I am Yours. I long to be your bridegroom.
But a monogamous relationship with Me can never be sustained if you cave to the whims of an adulterous heart.
So for a year I want you to delight in Me. I long for all of your heart.
To say I was moved is an understatement. It was more like I was shattered. Humbled that God would desire such intimacy with me. I prayed He would make clear His plans and, through the rest of the drive, prayed over this new concept of fasting. By the time I pulled through the Red Stick’s city limits, I knew a yearlong intimacy fast was what He was asking of me. Even though I knew close to nothing about the concept of fasting, I trusted God would teach me. So I clung to Proverbs 3:5–6, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (NASB). Again, I chose to believe.