Learn To Die

Although this was written to pastors I believe everyone needs to hear it. After all, if you are a Christian, you have a ministry. So this applies to a high school student or a parent as much as it does to any pastor. We must all learn to die to ourselves in order to live for the glory of Another. 

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The health and success of your ministry really are a matter of life and death. If you are ever going to be in ambassador in the hands of the God of glorious and powerful grace, you must die.

You must die to your plans for your own life.

You must die to your self- focused dreams of success.

You must die to your demands for comfort and ease.

You must die to your individual definition of the good life.

You must die to your demands for pleasure, acclaim, prominence, and respect.

You must die to your desire to be in control.

You must die to your hope for independent righteousness.

You must die to your plans for others.

You must die to your craving for a certain lifestyle or that particular location.

You must die to your own kingship.

You must die to the pursuit of your own glory in order to take up the cause of the glory of Another.

You must die to your control over your own time.

You must die to your maintenance of your reputation.

You must die to having the final answer and getting your own way.

You must die to your unfaltering confidence in you.

You must die.

And nothing helps “kill us” like private personal worship does. Your private devotional life has the power to kill the “me-ism” that is inside you (and me) that will again and again cause you to be in the way of, rather than part of, whatever it is that God is doing at the moment. Private personal worship is it an effective tool of grace in the hands of God to kill those things in you that must die in order that you be what you have been called to be and do what you have been appointed to do in your place of ministry.

(Excerpt taken from Dangerous Calling)