Jesus Over Everything: Uncomplicating the Daily Struggle to Put Jesus First

There is no one safer than Jesus. No worry of betrayal, no worry He will turn His back and walk away. He’s never told a thing I’ve told Him. He’s never been absent when I needed Him most.

Too often the unfinished us is blind to what the Spirit-shaped us can be over time. Lies have felt true, damning, and permanent. We aren’t weak for falling for them. We are human. But we need to put the truth of Jesus over them now.

Any of us who have become less than who God created us to be are not really who we are.

Until the desire for healing became greater than the fear of being honest, you weren't going anywhere.

Wanting to exercise your gifts is not self-serving. Wanting people to love you because of it is.

There is a fine line between wanting God to use you for his glory and wanting everyone to know it.

Lisa Bevere said it best: you will never have authority over something you are entertained by.1 And therein lies the reason many of us walk around feeling weak and defeated many days.

It didn’t take me long to realize that alcohol never brought me one good thing. It was attached to every compromising choice I made in college. It never made me a better person. It never moved me closer to Jesus. It never made me feel like I was strong. It never nurtured my soul. It never made me feel real and true. It never held me for the long haul. It never brought out my best. I hated it, and I thought I needed it at the same time.

world is full of passive bystanders to injustice and immorality—watching us wreck our lives as we go down dangerous moral and mental roads without someone to love us enough to help us by saying, “That’s not the best place for you to be,” or “That could affect your family, so why do it?” or “That’s not who you really are, so don’t waste your life playing around with something that will hurt you.” We are so afraid not to offend; we don’t want to say anything, and we don’t know how to do it without bringing far more flesh than Jesus into it because (brace yourself for an ouch) we have a lazy relationship with the Holy Spirit. At the core of it all is self-interest. We often do not get involved, not because we care about honoring others’ independence but because we care about preserving ourselves.

Judgment is a soul cancer—it attacks us from the inside and eats away at our ability to live strong lives. Love is the antidote for that.

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. . . . Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

We judge because we recognize in others what we don’t like in ourselves.

We are born homesick, every one of us. We who live in this fractured world have eternity written on our hearts; we are longing to be home and are digging the tent pegs of our lives in as deep as we can get them until we arrive on eternity’s shores.

Wisdom is not about never apologizing. It’s about sincere apology when it’s right.

Jesus wasn’t at the forefront of my mind when I overindulged in sin or I wouldn’t have done it. I’ve been like the Ephesians, forgetful of my first love (Revelation 2:4).

You simply find a new way to serve that works now, and you do it with all your heart. There doesn’t have to be a massive heart breakdown about this and a big deal made over what was that no longer is. Mourn it if you need, then move on. Today is a beautiful day with a new opportunity to see what Jesus wants to use your life to do. Let Him surprise you with new joys that come from the age-old plan. Let God move you where He wants to use you now. If you hang on to where He used you before, you say no to the goodness of what lies ahead.

Jesus-over-everything lifestyle or move us away from it, and they are plain and simple. Real over pretty. Love over judgment. Holiness over freedom. Service over spotlight. Steady over hype. Wisdom over knowledge. Honesty over hiding. Commitment over mood.

And I think about this life—how it rusts. How it collects dusts. How people steal from us. How when we are gone, there’s nothing here we miss, and our stuff is relegated to trash bins and auctions. How so much in our lives is precious yet how much of it is rubble and ash. But in both God remains. How it’s all His. How we’re all His. Jesus over everything. From Genesis 1 until the end.

The true success of a person is not in whether she can make her life work; it’s in whether she can die to her life enough for Jesus to work in her. When hard times come, how much we’ve practiced this principle will show.

We have nothing to do with God’s gift of salvation and everything to do with the acceptance of it and the ongoing process of growing our faith. And yet in that there is choice and free will. The promise of eternity does not waver based on our poor decisions after salvation, but the keeping of our minds, bodies, and souls is a choice-by-choice partnership with Christ. My pastor, Jay Stewart, recently spoke something powerful and profound over us one Sunday that crystallizes this point: “What’s better—to be able to say, ‘I am forgiven and saved’ or ‘I have become like Christ?’” We can get technical about this and argue about how salvation is the most important thing, and on the core premise, I will agree. Nothing matters if we don’t first choose to follow Christ. But to rest on our status of heaven-bound rather than pursue holiness and sanctification (the process of becoming like Christ) exposes our desire for a lazy faith. God’s plan is not for us to accept salvation and sit with it. It is for us to share its miracle with the world.

•​He was beautifully honest. − He cried and was real before God: Who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. (Hebrews 5:7–8 NKJV)

We aren’t Jesus, so the laying down of our lives would pale in comparison to the act of sacrifice on the cross, but we can sacrifice in our daily life. How? By standing against violence and racism (saying no to racist jokes and stereotypes). By defending widows and orphans in whatever way God leads (James 1:27). By refusing to allow gossip or division in our midst. By taking people in and by clothing and feeding them. Pray and use the imagination God gave you and think out of the box—the opportunities to “lay down our lives” for others are endless. If we are looking to love people, God will surely give us the chance.

If you choose to put Jesus in His place of preeminence, He will bless your life. He will sort out things that you’ve never been able to sort out before. He will do a perfect job at managing the imperfect life you haven’t been capable of managing on your own. If that sounds good to you, I would just ask you to dive in and read this book to the end for the full picture.

Sugarcoating the real stuff that bonds us in our humanity robs us of community.

Craving the attention of man produces in us a desire to stay concerned with our own interests over the hurts of the world. God is not in that.

Sometimes along the way we get the ida that it's noble to keep secrets for other people., cover for them in their wrongdoing even at the expense of our own souls. Please her me say this, loud and clear: it is not spiritual to cover for people, especially in lieu of our own healing. Jesus would never ask us to wound our own soul to allow someone else to thrive in sin. Other believers personal lives are under His ownership, not ours.

If we trust a perfect God, we will trust that His version of us is the best version, and we will want none of the subtracted version we have become.

But, oh my word, be impressed with Jesus. The One who thought up all this and you and me and the people we so admire and think are the greatest people we have ever known. The One who is holding this whole world together right this very second, and if He were to let go of it for one second, it would crash and blow away into nothingness because without Him there is nothing left. The One who is our real place, soft place, holy place, honest place, true place, loyal place, and eternal place of of Home. May we never get over Him.

Lies, especially the ones you want to believe , can be convincing.