Self Less

     Early in my Christian Walk, and when I say early I mean in the first few months of my conversion, I was faced with the very first real dilemma of my faith. It did not help that I was still very new to the Christian life; I was still trying to figure out what it meant to be a Christian. All I knew was that I wanted to be obedient to Christ. Christ had offered me a changed life, a life that held meaning and purpose, and I meant to have it.

     During one Sunday night service the pastor told us that one of our greatest needs as a Christian was to “Die to self.” Twelve years later these words still cause me to shiver. That night I was beside myself. On the one hand I knew that this was one of those habits that a Christian should know, but for me I had no idea of what it meant to die to self. I had been listening to the sermon; I knew that the Apostle Paul had admonished the Galatians to die to self. Paul had even given himself as the example by telling his audience that “I die daily.” But how was I going to add this to my spiritual repertoire, the spiritual novice that I was.

     By the end of the service I was in tears, literally in tears. My whole life had been lived with me on center stage. I had lived a life dedicated to fulfilling my own desires. Even when I did a “selfless act,” I did it with the thought, what’s in it for me. I was singing in the key of me. Me, Me, Me, Me… To die to myself was alien to me I had no idea even where you would start. After the service I made my way down to the front pew and waited to talk with the pastor. All I could say was, “I don’t know how.”

     He did not so much answer the question as he did pose a different one. His question is the same as the one that I pose to you,”How close do you want to be to God?”  There are two different types of Christian, well really three. The first is the cultural Christian; the I’m a Christian because my parents were Christians. The second is the kind I did not want to be, the Christian who goes through their Christian life as if it were something to check off of their list for the week or something that they do out of guilt. Then there is the one I want to be, a sold out, born again, son of the throne, Jesus freak. A real, “Honk if you love Jesus” follower of Christ.

     How far you want to go with Christ will determine how well you will be able to die to self.   Paul says I am dead, but yet I live, yet it is not I, but Christ that lives in me.  Allowing Christ to live in you is the process of dying to self. To live for Christ is to let his will be our will, conforming our desires to the desires of Christ to the point where nothing else matters, not our wants and not our desires.  

     It is in the Christians nature to desire the will of God in their lives. Do not fool yourself though. We are commanded to die to self; we are commanded to present ourselves as living sacrifices but the natural man cannot do either. As the Old preacher said; the problem with living sacrifices is that they keep getting off the alter. Our baser nature keeps us from doing what we want to do, that which we are supposed to do. Paul said that he also had a hard time with this also, He said; “I die daily.” It was not something that he did once and then never had to do again, it was a daily thing that he did. For us it may have to be an hourly thing but over time it will get easier. What God commands he will equips us with what we need to accomplish his will. As we grow as Christians and we grow closer to God, relying on Him, we learn to die to ourselves and to the world that preaches self above all else.