dying to self on Fire

Textual Overview The Gospel of Luke has a clear narrative path that begins with links to Israel’s past and God’s promises to her. Those promises are now going to be fulfilled in the life, death, resu...

Textual Overview The Gospel of Luke has a clear narrative path that begins with links to Israel’s past and God’s promises to her. Those promises are now going to be fulfilled in the life, death, resu...

When God would have us die to self, he always touches the tenderest spot

Francis Chan tells the story of Domingo and Irene Garcia: He’s a mechanic. She’s a hairdresser. They have been foster parents to thirty-two children and have adopted sixteen. Domingo and Irene are in...

My wife, Lauretta, once remarked to me, “I know I’d die for Christ. If I were put in front of a firing squad and commanded to renounce Christ or die, I know I’d say ‘Shoot me!’ That would be easy. The...

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...

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...

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

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

Gracious God, you freely embraced death for us. Every day we choose our own will. We choose not to die to ourselves for you. We take the gift you gave us and squander it. Please give us the courage ...

Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, tells the following Sufi story. Once upon a time there was an old woman who used to meditate on the bank of the Ganges. One morning, finishing her meditatio...

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, th...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

“You will be dead, so long as you refuse to die.”

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.

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’...

God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. That is surely rather a peculiar way of victory, you say; but it is the divine way....

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...

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’...

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...

The seed dies into a new life, and so does man.

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.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

God creates out of nothing. Therefore, until a man is nothing, God can make nothing out of him.

One summer morning in 1896, Albert Schweitzer came upon the biblical passage “Whosoever would save his life shall lose it and whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall save it.” He knew at the m...