The Cost of Carrying the Glory
The Road to Thanatos of the Flesh
If you want the glory of God, understand this: it will cost you your life. I’m not talking about a poetic surrender or a raised hand during worship. I’m talking about thanatos, the Greek word for death, the kind that leaves nothing of you behind. The kind that buries your flesh six feet under and does not allow you to claw your way back to the surface.
The glory of God is not a blanket to comfort you; it is a furnace to consume you. It is not a gentle breeze but a violent wind. It will strip you, break you, and demand your all. And if you are not ready to die, you are not ready to carry it.
Isaiah understood this in ways the modern church often forgets. When the prophet was caught up in a vision of the throne room, he did not respond with joy or excitement. He was wrecked. He said,
“Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5)
Undone. The Hebrew word here, damah, means to be cut off, silenced, destroyed. Isaiah experienced a kind of spiritual death, thanatos of the flesh, before he could ever carry the weight of the glory.
You want the glory, but are you ready to be undone? Are you ready for God to unravel everything you thought you knew about yourself, to lay bare the darkest corners of your soul, and to burn away everything that does not look like Him?
Isaiah did not get to skip the fire. The seraphim touched his lips with a burning coal, searing away his iniquity and purging his sin (Isaiah 6:6-7). There was nothing gentle about it. The fire was hot, the coal was real, and the pain was necessary. Purification always requires heat.
And then came the call: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” (Isaiah 6:8)
Only the dead can respond to that call. Only those who have embraced thanatos, death to self, death to comfort, death to ego, can say, “Here am I! Send me.”
The cost of carrying the glory is a bloody, brutal process. It is not a ticket to a platform or a shortcut to influence. It is a one-way road to the cross. You do not get to bring your dreams, your plans, or your self-preservation along for the ride. Everything that is not crucified will be a weight too heavy to bear under the glory.
When Isaiah was sent, he was not promised success. He was commissioned to speak to a people who would not listen, to labor without visible fruit, to pour out his life knowing he might never see the harvest. That is the price.
Isaiah 60 declares,“Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the Lord will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you.” (Isaiah 60:1-2)
The glory of God is meant to shine in darkness, but the vessel must be emptied of self. An uncrucified life will only dim the light. Death to flesh, thanatos, is the only way to release the fullness of His glory.
Jesus put it plainly
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Luke 9:23-24)
The glory is not a Sunday morning experience; it is a daily crucifixion. It is waking up every morning with the resolve to die again. To lay down your rights, your offense, your need to be understood, your desire to be liked.
It will cost you everything. You will lose friends. You will be misunderstood. You will be stretched until you break and then broken until there is nothing left to stretch. If you still want to live, you are not ready. If you are still protecting pieces of your life, you are not worthy of the call.
But if you embrace thanatos, if you willingly go to the grave with Christ, you will carry the glory. You will walk into rooms and darkness will flee. You will speak and the atmosphere will shift. You will live as a vessel of heaven on earth, not because of who you are, but because of who died within you.
When the coal touches your lips, let it burn. When the fire comes, do not run. When God says, “Die here,” lay down and breathe your last. The world does not need more polished sermons or palatable Christianity. It needs dead men and women walking, those who carry the glory as a mantle of war, whose very existence is a threat to the kingdom of darkness.
Die well. Carry the glory. Make hell tremble.
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