If I have learned nothing else in the last ten months it is that death is the most painful and glorious process God created- and the most necessary. The death of our physical bodies is the only thing in this life that we can be sure of and with God everything is a glimpse into something far greater. We are born only to someday die, and we live on only to die daily to ourselves. “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may be revealed in our mortal body” 2 Cor. 4:10-12. But what is the point in dying to everything that our flesh desires? If we really desire Jesus above everything else, then the death of ourselves should be one of the first things we seek. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” Gal 2:20.
In Andrew Murray’s book, “Humility” he explains that humility is the root of everything good. I can’t serve without humility, I can’t love without humility, and I can’t truly live without humility. And humility is the knowledge of my infinite nothingness and dying to myself so that God can be everything. God can never be great enough, and I can never be small enough. “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” Gal 6:2-3. For even Jesus, the Son of God had to walk in the deepest humility of all, making Himself nothing, so His Father would be glorified. Jesus said of Himself, “The son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” Jn 5:19. All sin begins with thinking we are something apart from God, when we are nothing. The fall of Satan was rooted in pride and the fall of man was rooted in pride. Pride infiltrates and infects all we do, think, or say. It is the root of all that separates us from God and therefore should be the first thing we seek to destroy. This is by seeking Jesus’ humility above all else and choosing at any cost to take it upon ourselves. “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion…Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves…Your attitude should be the same as Jesus… who, being in very nature GOD, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself NOTHING, taking the very nature of a servant…he humbled himself and became obedient to death.” Php 2:1-7
The beauty of it though is that it is all unto love. Infinite, jealous, glorious love. If we truly had a glimpse into this love and then into eternity, we would realize the futility of this life, how small and incomparable the time is here compared with the age to come with our Jesus. With every revelation of His love and into eternity, we are more apt to not only accept suffering, pain, and the death of ourselves, but rejoice in its coming. Even to long after more ways to die to ourselves. Our flesh is gripping at every chance for self-preservation, but our spirits are crying out for God to fill every part of our being. We only have this life to give. After this short time we will never again get to choose Him in the midst of chaos, confusion, pain, and the hardest of all, in our pride. God allows us to be apart of something so much greater, if we choose it. As Jesus was preparing for His own death, He spoke with His closest friends and told them, “Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am my servant also will be” Jn. 12:23-26. Jesus is speaking of the life He lived of selflessness, humility, and love and of the death He is about to endure. He then goes on to say, “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say?! Father save me from this hour?? No! It was for this very reason I came [to die and give Himself up for us!]…Father, glorify Your name.” We will never regret giving more and then more and more to Jesus, the One who gave up everything for us. We will only regret even the smallest things we still try to hold onto. The glory that awaits us far surpasses our momentary troubles. Where else do you have to go, who else do you have to turn to? Why else are you here? It’s all for Him. Become nothing, so He can become everything. Die to everything, and you will never be so alive. “What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish [trash!], that I may gain Christ and be found in him…I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead [His life!]” Php. 3:8-11.
“Through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as imposters; known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” -2 Cor. 6:8-10
