What is a martyr heart? In our world today there are those of some world religions who call themselves martyrs, but they are not really so. Their heart is not a willingness to lay down their own lives, but a desire to destroy the lives of others – and if, in doing that, they have to lose their own lives, then they are willing.

The martyr heart which the Lord wants to give us – not just GTK Apostolic Network, but the whole end time church – is very different. We must be willing to lay down our lives, not in order to destroy as many others as we can with us, but to bear witness to our Lord and Saviour. We are to be martyrs not to bring death, but to bring life.

To have a martyr heart does not just mean being willing to face physical death. Some will face that ultimate decision, many will not. All of us need to have the same kind of heart that Jesus had. Before Jesus ever faced the Sanhedrin, before He endured the whip and the thorns, before the nails secured Him to the cross, He had entered repeated levels of death.

Just being born, for Jesus, was a form of death. For all eternity He had enjoyed the love and fellowship of the Father and the Holy Spirit. He had rejoiced in infinite power, infinite knowledge and infinite holiness. He had filled all of existence, unlimited in space or time. From the beginning of creation He had been acclaimed, honored and worshiped by the host of heaven and the creatures of the earth. Yet to rescue the one species on earth that did not serve Him faithfully – man – He laid all that aside, died to all His power and prerogatives, and became a helpless infant. He did not love His life as God so much that He was unwilling to lay it down. That’s a martyr heart.

Do we have position, power, privilege? Do we reason that it has been given to us by God, and therefore we should not have to let it go? Do we cling to it, offended that anyone would even suggest that we may need to step down? God wants to give us a heart which will willingly lay aside all that is ours, in order that we may rescue those who are perishing without Christ.

In coming to earth, Jesus left the perfect world with which He was so familiar, to come into a world which was totally alien to Him. A world made filthy by sin. A world made ugly by man’s hate and greed. A world thrown into chaos by man’s disobedience. Have you ever pondered how uncomfortable this world must have been for the sinless Son of God? How difficult it must have been for Him to live with the attitudes and behaviors of even the best of His friends and acquaintances, never mind those who blatantly opposed Him? He had to die to His own comfort, in a sense even to His own standards of acceptability – not that those standards were ever lowered.

Do we hold on to our comfort, clinging to what is familiar? Do we feel it would be beneath our dignity to walk among those who do not conform to our standards? Do we have trouble tolerating the shortcomings of others? God wants to give us a heart which is willing to die to those things we hold most dear, in order to reach those very people.

Scripture tells us that Jesus “became obedient.” Not that He had ever been disobedient, but because He had never before known what it was to have to obey. There was no disharmony between Him and the Father, so His life in eternity had not been a matter of obedience. With the Father and the Spirit, He had framed the laws by which the universe operated. From the beginning of creation, He had been the one who was obeyed. Now, He was placed in a position of subjection, not only to the Father, but to His earthly mother and stepfather, and to the governing authorities of both Israel and Rome. He had to learn to choose to follow the will of another, even when that will was contrary to His own, even when He knew that what was being asked of Him was mistaken, or foolish, or unnecessary. That obedience reached its ultimate conclusion at Gethsemane when, with every fibre of His human nature screaming that it should not be so, He nonetheless bowed before the Father’s will and accepted the cup of human sin and guilt. That was a death far more potent than the physical death which He was about to face.

Do we cling fiercely to our own will? Do we want to “do it our way”? God wants to give us a heart which will be totally submitted to Him, willing to accept His will, plans and purposes for our lives even when everything in us wants something different.

In short, God wants a people who are dead: dead to their own power and privilege, dead to their own comfort, dead to their own will. When we come to that point, the question of whether we are willing to face physical death becomes a non-issue.

There is a story of a young man in the 19^th Century who was going as a missionary to one of the wild countries of Africa. Some of his friends were horrified, and tried hard to dissuade him. “You could be killed!” they told him. His reply was simple: “I am already dead. I died when I came to Christ. Whether He chooses to allow this body to continue on earth or not, is His prerogative.” That’s a martyr’s heart.