Dying to Ourselves with a Lasting Finality

The spiritual life can only truly commence when the last vestiges of pride and self-sufficiency have long been vanquished. The soul’s solemnity is now indelibly marked. Never again, it’s hoped, will a trip be made to this person darkened by propensity to circumstance.

There is hardly a more important objective for life, but to become rightly aligned with our vital Spiritual truth. Before this time we were merely spinning our wheels in the mud. Afterwards, we see life adroitly—one life splits apart from the other; a re-birth has taken place.

From that perspective we can reflect:

“How many deaths did I die before I was awakened to new life again? How many half-truths did I bear witness to ‘til the proof was disproved in the end?”

~Nichole Nordeman, Holy (2002).

The Event of Final Surrender

Many a mature Christian can locate very quickly the time they came to finally give up trying to fool themselves and God.

Like Nichole Nordeman sings about in her song, Holy, we got sick ‘n’ tired of being spiritually sick ‘n’ tired. The lies that were our lives crippled us. Something had to be done about it. The Spirit of God energised us to that end.

It is blessing, sheer blessing, to arrive at the place of ‘enough!’ and work through that dilemma such that a God-enabled change is developed and enacted upon.

Ongoing Surrender is Still, Always, Necessary

There are vestiges of sin in every mature believer. Perfection, certainly with lasting effect, is unattainable.

The pleasant irony of this fact is accepting our sinful natures, in at last agreeing with God that the ‘design for this life’ wins and we don’t have the control we might like to think we have, even over our sanctification to holiness.

It’s fine to have come to a point of dying to ourselves. The truth is, however, it’s a reality that we’ll have to continue to work out. In other words, we never become good at it.

One finality merely begets another one that has a lifetime journey about it.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.