I haven’t posted for a while so I thought I’d share what Holy Spirit dropped into my heart today. We were at a church event last night and one of the men stated that living the christian life was process of “learning how to die well’. That statement went deep into my spirit and is still resonating today.

One of my favorite writers is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. In his classic. THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP, he states ”When God calls a man, he bids him come and die”. Thats a hard pill for us as modern day, western culture christians to swallow. The modern ”woke” culture within the church balks at these kind of statements because it is rooted in self appeasement and gratification. It’s based on focusing on my wants, wishes, desires and happiness. I read a different message in my bible. Jesus’ very life was the antithesis to this message. He taught that dying to self, putting others first, and taking up our cross and following him was the way a believer must live. There are too many references to list, but I’ll share just one. John 12:24 says this

“Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal. (The Message Bible). Verse 25 in The Passion Translation says it this way

“The person who loves his life and pampers himself will miss true life! But the one who detaches his life from this world and abandons himself to me, will find true life and enjoy it forever!”

So what was Jesus saying? Simply the same thing I heard last night. Living the christian life is learning how to die well. Any conversation about dying to self is one that our flesh chooses to avoid, yet, It is one of the cornerstones of our faith. Jesus talked about it, the apostles wrote about it, as much as our flesh balks at the thought of it, it’s a vital part of who we are as believers.

In dying to ourselves we are saying my thoughts, happiness, feelings are secondary. Serving and giving myself for the benefit of other, whether friend or foe, is primary. It hurts to even say that, let alone practice it. In dying to ourselves we become that grain of wheat that goes into the ground. When we let ourselves die this manner, our seed turns into a harvest of many seeds with each seed in turn having the potential of producing it’s own harvest. Harvest is gathered because our nature dies and the nature of Christ is then manifested through us.

So what’s the message here? Each one of us has been given the gift of Christ’s life in us. We can keep it to ourselves and never reap the harvest that gift was designed to produce. Or, we die to our own design, and let Christ’s nature manifest through us and see the harvest come. We really do not lose anything; in fact, we gain much more than we could ever give up. We gain an eternal perspective and mindset. That, in the end, is of more value than anything we could ever, ever let go of in his life.

I don’t know about you, but want to get more focused on dying well.