The Missing Piece

One of the things I keep hearing, and something I used to hear a lot in my days with O.M. (Operation Mobilisation, a missionary group I was with in the 70s), is the importance of being dead to self.

I suppose it would be an insult to some, but when my African brother and friend told me last night that I was ‘really dead’, it was actually a compliment—intended and received.

I feel like it is the missing piece needed in Kingdom work for the Gospel to make advances and for the image of Jesus in and through our lives to be most brilliant and radiant.

The Bible says:

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. ~ Galatians ii 20

The fact is if we want to really live for God, we need to be really dead! It’s the missing piece.

We all know how awful, how embarrassing and how shameful it can be when someone is serving God in “their own way”, or gifted in a certain style of ministry and they know it too! It’s “cringeworthy”, as my daughters might say. And worse, instead of us lifting up the One who (alone) can draw all men to Himself, we’blot our copybook’ and spatter ugliness over the beautiful picture of Jesus in His Word. And many people ministering in this way can easily and quickly put people off the Gospel and drive men away from Jesus.

So many amazing works of God sputter and die, with no eternal fruit, when we get in the way and do things as living men dead, rather than dead men living.

Yes. Do we want to see the mighty acts of God at work in and around us? His miracles and healing released? Then, we need to die. “Really dead”. Die daily to self, our ambitions, illicit relationships, our traditions, our desires, and sometimes, even our dreams need to be placed on the altar—dead and sacrificed—so that our Father might bring about the true, eternal resurrection miracle! Come! Live! Die!