Written by Diane Hunt: Diane Hunt serves on the board of America’s Keswick and is the Executive Director & CEO of Changed Choices, a Christian non-profit in North Carolina. She is also a biblical counselor and women’s event speaker. For more information about having Diane speak at your next event please contact her at dhunt@americaskeswick.org
Death Then Life
Posted on November 25, 2022 by Elizabeth Welte in Victory Call
“Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.” (1 Corinthians 15:36)
Oh how we resist dying. I don’t mean physical death, I mean the kind of death required to follow Jesus daily.
“If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)
Do you ever find yourself wrestling with what you know God wants which directly interferes with what you want? In other words – that moment when the Lord is calling you to deny yourself?
When you want to say what shouldn’t be said…
When you want to go where you shouldn’t go…
When you want to entertain thoughts that you know are not God pleasing…
When you want to do something else other than keep that commitment…
When you want to gossip rather than keep silent…
When you want to eat more than you know is healthy…
When you want to overspend your budget…
When you want to have the last word, win the argument, share your opinion, again…
When you want to pout when things don’t go your way…
When you want to be unkind and unloving…
We all know the right thing to do and if we don’t, we know the One to ask, yet we wrestle. We resist death. We resist denying our self. We love our selves more than we love God. We resist the cross.
“In the long run, the pain of resisting the cross is harder to live with than the cross itself.” (i)
What we so often fail to remember, because Satan doesn’t want us to remember, is that on the other side of death is life.
“Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:11)
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20)
Every day let’s embrace the cross in all the little details of life. Let’s stop wrestling and allow God to accomplish His plan and purpose in our life, to make us more like Jesus.
As we become more like Christ, we will go willingly to the cross because of the joy on the other side. “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross…” Hebrews 12:2
Look past death and the cross to the life that lies beyond.
(i) Fenelon. The Seeking Heart. Pg. 4
Think About This: “Nothing in this world bears the impress of the Son of God so surely as forgiveness.” – Alice Cary
The Daily Bible Reading: Ezekiel 34-35; 1Peter 2 You can download our 2022 Daily Bible Reading Plan by clicking here.
This Week’s Verse to Memorize: “And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually.” 1 Corinthians 12:26-27