dying to self on Belonging

Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgrims making their way to ...

Preaching Commentary Summary of the Text Songs of Ascent Psalm 133 is part of the Psalter’s collection of the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120-134. The Songs of Ascent were sung by the throng of pilgri...

The people who have been made larger by suffering are brave enough to let parts of their old self die. Down in the valley, their motivations changed. They’ve gone from self-centered to other-centered.

The Christian life is a great paradox. Those who die to self, find self. Those who die to their cravings will receive many times as much in this age, and, in the age to come, eternal life (Luke 18:29)...

It makes little sense to attract people on the basis of their own self-interest and then expect them to embrace an invitation to self-denial.

Gracious God, You have called us out of darkness and into the light of Your love. You have redeemed us and made us whole in order to set us free from bondage. The challenge You place before us is to d...

The entrance fee into the kingdom of heaven is nothing: the annual subscription is everything.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end...

At every point in the human journey we find that we have to let go in order to move forward; and letting go means dying a little. In the process we are being created anew, awakened afresh to the sourc...

The greatest burden we have to carry in life is self. The most difficult thing we have to manage is self. Our own daily living, our frames and feelings, our especial weaknesses and temptations, and ou...

We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

Holy God, we come to confession realizing that we are often aware of the big sins in our lives, but we ignore the sins we think are small. We ask Your forgiveness for times when we have been apathetic...

The moral project for a Christian is to die to the old self and rise to new life in Christ. This dying and rising is the rhythm of a life of discipleship, a life devoted to becoming more and more lik...

Jesus, the hero of the world’s most well-known spiritual narrative, offers us a mysteriously clear path to the good life: “Anyone who doesn’t pick up their cross and follow after me doesn’t deserve me...

If you wish to live, you must first attend your own funeral.

Preaching Commentary Paul’s Gospel In 1 Corinthians 1:17-25 we find the gospel that Paul preaches summarized in Christ’s crucifixion. Here in 2 Timothy 2:8, Paul’s gospel is encapsulated in Christ’...

Circumstances which we have resented, situations which we have found desperately difficult, have all been the means in the hands of God of driving the nails into the self-life which so easily complain...

Growth in grace is growth downward. It is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves. It is a deepening realization of our nothingness. It is a heartfelt recognition that we are not worthy of the le...

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.

If you are ever going to be an ambassador in the hands of a 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 ...

None of us are there yet, but if we each have this attitude, we will put to death our reactions to criticisms and offenses. And though we may still stumble, we will learn that carrying the cross is no...

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life.

Context The Roman World Sin was a very real thing in Paul’s world. The city of Rome, the home of this church to which Paul was writing, had circuses, amphitheaters, theaters, baths, and more. And to...

Resolved, never henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God’s.

Context The Roman World Sin was a very real thing in Paul’s world. The city of Rome, the home of this church to which Paul was writing, had circuses, amphitheaters, theaters, baths, and more. And to...

It is not by telling people about ourselves that we demonstrate our Christianity. Words are cheap. It is by costly, self-denying Christian practice that we show the reality of our faith.

The deeper we are willing to enter into the death of self, the more shall we know of the mighty power of God, and the perfect blessedness of a perfect trust.

If worship is right because God is worthy of it, it is also the best of all antidotes to our own self-centredness, the most effective way to “disinfect us of egotism,” as one writer put it long ago. I...

The one misery of man is self-will, the one secret of blessedness is the conquest over our own wills. To yield them up to God is rest and peace. What disturbs us in this world is not “trouble,” but ou...