you, in the mirror (on the correct Christian response to the call to die)

I've been through a few deep weeks of funk earlier in this year.

I felt this heaviness, this weight, that was pushing me to look inward...way inward.

With each look I didn't like what I saw.
I could feel an inward struggle raging.

I knew the Lord was working in me, refining yet again. But "haven't I been refined enough Lord over the last year?!" "I just want to be normal for a little bit."

Prior to all of this I had asked the Lord to impress a verse to me that was to be "my" verse for the year. I kept coming back to Colossians 3:2-3 "Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things; For you have died and your life is now hidden with Christ."

It didn't hit me all at once, but slowly, gradually, and with the greatest tenderness, I have been shown that my funk, my inward seeking and probing, they were revealing my resistance to this death, to this hiding my life with Christ.

I was fighting for control.
I was fighting for my life.

In Haiti I knew I was being poured out, but as we'd returned "home" I had quietly almost imperceptibly acclimated to the American culture ideal that I was the master and commander of my life. Our culture is afraid of death. Laying down your own life, in any way, is terrifying.

But I am called to live a different paradigm. I should run to the cross. To death.

Lay down my ideas for my future.
Lay down my control.
Lay down my desire for a stable paycheck and health insurance and a nice 401k plan.
Lay down my perfectly clean house.
Lay down my "me" time.
Lay down my desire for a play room, an office, a guest room.
Lay them all down.

Because, for me, or anyone who calls themselves a Christian, death to yourself is not the end of the story. We, of all people, should know what follows death. The Christian life is a resurrected life, a life that cannot be contained by death.

Death is only the beginning of the greatest story of all. 

And I get to be a part of it.

A realization that wipes away my funk and is replaced with a deep joy, an even deeper excitement, and the deepest rooted contentment that will not be shaken.

For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21

I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies it remains only a single seed. 
But if it dies, it produces many seeds. John 12:24

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Romans 6:8

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