Tuesday, August 11th, 2015
DYING TO SELF
If you read a broad swath of Christian writers or listen to a few hundred sermons, you’ll see and hear a sizable number of times that to be a steadfast follower of Jesus Christ you need to die to self. Jesus himself says that to gain your life you must lose it.
This was one of those “yah, but how does anyone do that?” kind of things until I heard a sermon by Pastor Dave Hannig on July 7, 1991.
“It is not easy to die to self,” he said. “You have to plan to do it. You deny what you want to obey what Jesus wants. You die to your self-interest and self-centeredness.” He finished his sermon with these words: “To die to self is to deny that I am my own god and to accept that He is my Lord.”
You might ask if I’m there yet. I’d have to say, “No, but I know in which direction to go.” Perhaps that’s all any of us can do. Perfection is not a part of this life.