You Must Die

I've been thinking a lot about dying lately. Not physical death--rather, what we mean when we say, "a part of me is dying," or "die to self." One night as I lay in bed, Colossians 3:3 came sharply into my mind. It's a verse I've never intentionally memorized, but God spoke it into my heart clearly, unmistakably:

"For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God."

More than once over the last year or so, I've uttered the phrase "a part of me is dying/has died." It has recently struck me: Why do I consider this a mournful thing? Scripture speaks over and over about how we have died, how we must die--how life comes only through death. Over and over God speaks of my dying with Christ--so that I can be raised with Him to something better. So I must trust that if "part of me has died," it is His mercy, making way for a new, better, holy me to truly live.

I realized after I started this post that I blogged about this very thing a few months ago, saying, "it's in death to self that I am most beautiful, because it's here that I look most like my Savior--the One who died that I might live." But I'd forgotten all about that. Thankfully, God is patient with this slow learner. And so I pray yet again:

Give me the grace to die to self, Lord--to accept and even embrace the death of a sin-soaked me so that a grace-soaked me can live, and live abundantly. Teach me to set my heart on things above, where You are on the throne, where Christ is seated (because His work is FINISHED!) at Your right hand. Teach me to embrace my death, to look with hope toward glory, toward real, abundant, forever-life with You.