dying on Arrogance

Abraham Lincoln’s sharp wit often surfaced, even in serious moments. At the funeral of a talented but overly vain Army General during the Civil War, Lincoln observed the large crowd that had gathered....

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? A letter of friendship Paul’s letter to the Philippians is from Paul and his companions to the saints in Philippi. It is a letter fro...

You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.

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...

A truly gospel-humble person is not a self-hating person or a self-loving person, but a gospel-humble person. The truly gospel-humble person is a self-forgetful person whose ego is just like his or he...

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

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...

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...

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...

"No sense of the irony of human experience, that we are the highest form of life on earth, and yet ineffably sad because we know what no other animal knows, that we must die."

I sometimes think that the very essence of the whole Christian position and the secret of a successful spiritual life is just to realize two things: I must have complete, absolute confidence in God an...

Hence that dread and amazement with which as Scripture uniformly relates, holy men were struck and overwhelmed whenever they beheld the presence of God. When we see those who previously stood firm and...

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 ...

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 ...

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...

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...

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.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observes that the biblical ideal is not so much that we need to deny the self as to decenter the self: To see the self in truth, as an integral member of a comm...

Let me follow in Thy footsteps, O Jesus ! I would imitate Thee, but cannot without the aid of Thy grace! O humble and lowly Saviour, grant me the knowledge of the true Christian, and that I may willin...

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

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

The way to think about self-denial is to deny yourself only a lesser good for a greater good… Jesus wants us to think about sacrifice in a way that rules out all self-pity. This is, in fact, just what...

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.

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.

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.

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’...

Death to Life Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? The letter Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is a general letter, probably intended for wider distribution and use am...

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...

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 waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under, but over.