This is a difficult post to write in some ways because I know many won’t fully grasp or comprehend what I am trying to convey. It might make some uncomfortable and some may even see it as a “debbie downer” post. But here I go anyways.
Recently, I prayed asking God to kill me.
Now, before you go crazy and get too concerned, hear me out. 2016 has been a good year in many ways, but it has also been full of challenges. Even now as I write, I find myself in the middle of a really tough season. If you were to pass me on the street or sit down and drink a cup of coffee with me, you probably wouldn’t even notice, due to the fact that all the hard stuff I’m dealing with is inside stuff. Thought stuff. Feelings stuff. Emotional stuff. Heart stuff. But rest assured it is all good stuff. Painful stuff, yes. But, nonetheless, good stuff.
I have faced a couple of personal challenges recently that God has used to expose some things that I have kept buried for a long time. A couple of the things I have been through this year have unearthed things that I have left undealt with for a long time. Past hurts and wounds, resentments, lies I have believed, etc. It is like God is conveniently using my circumstances to act as an operating room. He has strapped me to the table and has begun doing surgery on my heart.
I’ll be honest, in alot of ways it feels like I’m dying. But that’s exactly what needs to happen. I need to die. I am convicted of the fact that if I don’t allow myself to die, I will never know what it feels like to be truly alive. I need to die to old ways of thinking. I need to kill off the past hurts and the power that they have had over me. I need to severe ties with the lies I have believed. I need to allow my selfishness to die. My desire to always be in the driver’s seat of my life needs to go. I need to kill my dreams, my plans and my agenda, so I can adopt God’s dreams for my life and His plans. His plans are far better than mine and involve aspects and details that I could never dream up or imagine. This is my prayer, that everything that needs to die in me would die, in order that I may be fully alive in Christ in every facet of my life. Although the process involves alot of pain, I will embrace the pain to run after my Savior without having to drag around all the dead weight of the past. I’m ready to let it all go. More than ever, I feel like I can identify with Paul, when he says:
Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with Him. I no longer count my righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with Himself depends on faith. I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in His death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead! (Phil. 3:8-11)
That is what I am after in this season, death to self that I may experience resurrection life. In previous seasons, I have avoided the pain of allowing God to fully kill me. I have held onto things that were comfortable. I have busied myself and preoccupied my thoughts so I wouldn’t have to fully deal with the pain. Time and time again God has invited me to go on this journey with Him. I have finally accepted the invitation. I am filled with faith and confidence that this season will produce more growth in me than any other. I am sure that what is coming is far greater than what’s been left behind. I have no strength of my own to walk this road, but my God is completely dependable. Although I may feel like Lazarus, laying in the tomb, I know that resurrection is coming. I know that God is breathing His life into what was once dead. It’s time to die so we can be made alive again.
