"Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:
Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:
Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of thy God in vain."
Proverbs 30: 7-9

God will not give us everything we want, because then we may become too comfortable in ourselves and start to lose sight of the Lord. We may start to think that we do not need Him, or even subconsciously lose focus of Him and lose our passion for Him. We may think that when the time comes we would be able to resist it and keep our sights on Him; but you will be amazed how weak the human will is, how desperately wicked the human heart is, and how, even while knowing the possibility of wandering away beforehand, is still so prone to wander. You will be amazed how quickly the human heart can become proud and self-sufficient, while just moments before it had vouched to remain humble and broken before God.

Yet at the same time God will never leave us with nothing in our lives. God never takes something away unless He intends to replace it with something better. When God closes the door He opens another. And truly, even when everything else in life is stripped away, even those things that we held so dear, we will never be poor and left with nothing, because we have Him. The loving God who never fails and never lets us go. A perfect love that casts our all fear. It is tough to have God strip everything away for the sake of His plans for us; it is certainly not what we are used to, and we will struggle with it! But with the deep struggle comes the even deeper comfort of knowing that God will always be with us, His love always covers us, and He holds our lives in His hands.

"Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." Phil. 3:21

One thing I realise that the greatest obstacle that we face in the Christian life is not external. It is not work, relationships, other people, or whatever else. It is ourselves. Often we like to put the blame on other things, and make excuses for ourselves. We look everywhere else except ourselves. Why do I say this? Because God has clearly promised in His Word that He has overcome the world. "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16:33. "I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." Phil 4:13. God has promised He can overcome anything that we face in this world. So when we face problems and feel like we don't know what to do, it is not that God is not able to help us. The problem is that we are not surrendered to Him.

I believe Paul could write his famous Philippians 4:13, because he could also write this verse- "...and I count all things but loss but for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whim I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ..." Phil 3:8. He could do everything through Christ because He was fully surrendered to Christ- he laid aside everything else, his own desires, his own dreams, his own achievements, and let Christ take over. He had nothing save Christ in his life, so that Christ could be everything; and when Christ is everything, there is no limit to what He can do. It's amazing.

But the hard part is surrendering. If there's one thing that we as humans don't like to do, it's surrendering. We cling on so hard to our own desires, our own feelings, our own thoughts. We refuse to step our of our comfort zone for Him. We want to follow Him but are afraid to suffer in the process. We refuse to give up our own dreams to seek God's will. We refuse to trust Him to take care of our lives, refuse to believe that He really has the best in mind for us. We choose our own way of doing things. In short, we are not taking up our cross.

Is it possible? To deny the flesh, deny ourselves and follow Christ wholeheartedly in our lives? No one said it was going to be easy! Look at the words that Paul uses- "change our vile body, fashioned, subdue." It is going to be a struggle, a major one. But the above verse makes it clear that Christ is able. What we cannot do, He can do in us. But we must be willing to let Him. We must be willing to submit our whole lives to Him and let Him transform it, even though the process will be long and hard.

And again we come to the question, why would we want to do this? Why would we be willing to lay down so much? Because He did it for us, and calls us to follow Him. In Jesus we have the greatest example of what it means to surrender all. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Phil 2:5-8. Remember that Jesus too, became a man like us. He took on a fleshy body, and faced all the temptations and struggles of the flesh that we face. But because He was God, He overcame them all. He surrendered all, and accomplished the mighty work that the Father had given Him to do, in the face of everything that Satan could hurl at Him.

We will never be perfect like He was, and we will fail in many ways, but we can be transformed into His likeness at least. "...that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body..." With the Spirit's help we can learn to seek Him wholeheartedly and be dead to ourselves; it will be a great struggle, and many times we will fall, but each time He will pick us up.

"Now thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place." 2 Cor. 2:14