What are you afraid of? Let God act. Abandon yourself to Him. You will suffer, but you will suffer with love, peace and consolation. You will fight, but you can carry off the victory, and God Himself, after having fought with you, will crown you with His own hand. You will weep, but your tears will be sweet, and God Himself will come with satisfaction to dry them. You will not be free any longer to give yourself up to your tyrannic passions, but you will sacrifice your liberty freely, and you will enter into a new liberty unknown to the world, in which you will do nothing except for love.
~François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
~Colossians 3:1-4
And some of us, by His grace, actually are given the gift of giving up on ourselves. We, at first, despair of any hope that we can make our lives work. Then we realize that that old man has to die. He has no place in our lives. He is like a cancerous limb that must be amputated that the rest of the soul might live.
Oh beloved, that old man will scream for attention! But that old dead self neither requires (nor deserves) digging up, attention, analysis, validation, recognition, sustenance, encouragement, financing, or friends.
However, sometimes we will even feel the pain of that amputated part of ourselves. Our brains receive messages that SCREAM for that one little shot of endorphin comfort that they used to get from an image, a touch, a taste… They will just do it. Of course, we know the problem. Feeding a little fleshly appetite does not make it go away – it only makes it grow. But, He teaches us to yield to the power of His Spirit. And we learn to rest, wait, obey and flee as He leads.
And what seems to be the worst of these impulses is not the impulse to do something “wrong,” but to kick ourselves wildly and repeatedly after doing the thing we knew we should not do. It is as if the flesh wants to double-tap our strength. It wants to take us away from walking in the Spirit, and then pull us back into the grave with itself.
While it sure doesn’t feel like it, this pain we feel is just like the pain an amputee feels “in” a missing limb. It feels real, but it is a false signal from a non-existent entity. It is a shadow impulse running around in the wiring our mind. And sometimes, it is an impulse injected by forces of evil outside the new creation into which He has made us.
While it sure doesn’t feel like it, this pain we feel is just like the pain an amputee feels “in” a missing limb. It feels real, but it is a false signal from a non-existent entity. It is a shadow impulse running around in the wiring our mind. And sometimes, it is an impulse injected by forces of evil outside the new creation into which He has made us.
Yet once something is dead and gone, it is – well… – dead and gone. May we tonight, simply refuse to listen to the phantoms wailing at us from the grave. May we instead, flee into His presence, where joy is full and true pleasure is held out by Him from His very right hand.
Never heed the old man’s fuss.
~ Eric Ludy, 9th principle of manly honor
“Death is only painful to him who resists it. The imagination exaggerates its terrors. The spirit argues endlessly to show the propriety of the life of self. Self-love fights against death, like a sick man in the last struggle. But we must die inwardly as well as outwardly. The sentence of death has gone forth against the spirit as well as against the body. Our great care should be that the spirit of self dies first. For then our bodily death will be but a falling asleep. Happy are they who sleep this sleep of peace!”
~François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
John 12:24
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.
Romans 12:1-2
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
1 Peter 4:1-2
Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God.
Galatians 5:24
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Romans 6:11
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 6:14
But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
Romans 6:11-14
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Romans 6:1-3
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. …
Romans 6:8
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
Luke 9:23-24
And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
2 Timothy 2:11
The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
Romans 8:12-13
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
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