dying on Resisting Change

The famous entertainer W. C. Fields, known for his humor, love of drink, and agnosticism, found himself bedridden in his final illness. When a longtime friend visited and noticed Fields reading the Bi...

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 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...

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

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...

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

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 ...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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’...

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...

Every story of conversion is a story of blessed defeat.

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...

An Irish Catholic priest, returning to his old parish in the warmth of spring, was delighted to spot an elderly man he had long known. “Pat!” he called out cheerfully. “You’re still with us—I’m glad t...

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.

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

Die before you have to die. There is no chance after.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

I was sixteen when a white deputy sheriff shot and killed my twenty-five-year-old brother, Clyde, in New Hebron, Mississippi, where we had grown up. Clyde had returned home from fighting in World War ...

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...

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...

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...

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 ...