I want to die!!!

Today was an unusual day for me.  As I celebrated the birth of my second child, I found myself doing a funeral for a friend of mine who had cancer.  She died at a very young age and left behind a husband and daughter that is ten and son that is two.  Since her sickness I found myself thinking a lot about mortality and new life.  On February 28th I found myself in the hospital holding my new beautiful daughter that you see below and meanwhile I am getting text messages and voice mails that my friend had just passed away.  Death and life all in one day.  I found myself looking through scripture for answers but came up with more questions.  What I found was truly amazing and unusual.  There seems to be a balance and yet conflict between life and death.  The bible says things like, "You must lose your life to find it, we died to self, we died with Christ, our old self must be crucified." There is this idea in scripture that things must die to bring life. We know this to be true.  Fruits, vegetables and animals must die to bring us life that we need. I think scripture is clear that the things that need to die in us are the things that pull us away from our Savior.  Then it hit me, I want to die!!

I have so many things in my life that is nothing like Jesus.  Here is a short list for your entertainment.

pride

complacency 

selfishness

faithlessness

insensitivity 

impurities 

This list could go on and on.  These things have to stop and these things have to die.  I need to have life and life to the fullest and if that is possible then these things can't be in my life.  God wants to kill these things in me so that people can see more of Jesus.  So today my prayer is that God would take his mighty hand and create in me a clean heart.  I pray that God would turn all of those ugly dead things into glory so that I may have real life.  So today I declare that I want to die.  Anything that is not like Jesus must be buried.  I don't believe we can live life the way that God would have us if death doesn't happen first.  The first step to life is death.  

So may death come to us all.  May we recognize what needs to die and bring that before God. And let us not be afraid of that death, for when we die life begins.