Lay Down Your Life!

God lives and works today, and his words have the power to change lives even today. For example, Jesus said, he who loves his own life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. In today's program by Baselea Schlenk, we will hear how these words were put into practice so that they did change lives and turn a difficult building project into a labor of joy and love.

Half a year had passed since we had finished building the chapel and mother house for our new sisterhood. We had built both of them with our own hands, so you can imagine how grateful we were when these two difficult years had come to an end. God had answered our prayers.

He had given us strength and had sustained us. Now we could look forward to leading a normal life, but this happiness didn't last very long. We needed work rooms for our ministry, and all of the rooms in the mother house had to be used for new sisters.

This meant that we had to build a new building, a workshop. Letting a construction company take over the project was out of the question because we didn't have any money, and so it meant that we would have to tackle the work again ourselves. However, the joy which had given us wings for the first building project was missing.

We just did not want to begin such heavy labor again. Mother Baselea asked the Lord in prayer to give us a Bible verse for this time. The verse we received was 1 John 3 verse 16.

As Jesus laid down his life for us, so ought we to lay down our lives for the brethren. It seemed as though Jesus was saying to us, If you really want to be my disciples, listen to my call. And then we began to read about all the other things Jesus said about forsaking, giving up, and losing.

We read that he said, This brings great blessing and abundant fruit. Yes, Jesus made it quite clear to us that laying down our lives was a privilege because we were permitted to do it for him. All of a sudden, it seemed as though there were a breath of fresh spring air in the sisterhood.

For this building project, we had a new greeting, a greeting which contained hidden strength. Every time we met, we greeted each other with the words, Lay down your life. Yes, great strength was hidden in this commitment to Jesus to sacrifice our physical strength and to take upon ourselves once again many unpleasant things, difficulties, and physical tiredness.

For this commitment united us with Jesus Christ himself. His strength not only flowed into our hearts, but also into our bodies. Our tiredness disappeared.

As the summer drew to a close, we had experienced that God had given us his aid. Therefore, if there is something waiting for you which depresses you, which seems to be too difficult for you to carry out because it's so demanding for body, soul, and spirit, then call aloud, Lay down your life. I want to lay down my life for his sake.

Then what seemed to be hard will become easy. Sacrifice now my life shall be. My strength and time, my all.

My life I give you in time. Yield everything when you call. You have been listening to a program written by Basile Schlink of the Little Land of Canaan.

To learn more about how God lives and works today, visit us at our website, www.canaan.org. That's K-A-N-A-A-N dot org. If you contact us, we would be happy to send you a free inspirational booklet. If you do not have access to the web, please contact this radio station for our postal address.

God bless you.