Although this was written to pastors I believe everyone needs to hear it. After all, if you are a Christian, you have a ministry. So this applies to a high school student or a parent as much as it does to any pastor. We must all learn to die to ourselves in order to live for the glory of Another.
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The health and success of your ministry really are a matter of life and
death. If you are ever going to be in ambassador in the hands of the God of
glorious and powerful grace, you must die.
You must die to your plans
for your own life.
You must die to your self-
focused dreams of success.
You must die to your demands
for comfort and ease.
You must die to your
individual definition of the good life.
You must die to your demands
for pleasure, acclaim, prominence, and respect.
You must die to your desire
to be in control.
You must die to your hope for
independent righteousness.
You must die to your plans
for others.
You must die to your craving
for a certain lifestyle or that particular location.
You must die to your own
kingship.
You must die to the pursuit
of your own glory in order to take up the cause of the glory of Another.
You must die to your control
over your own time.
You must die to your
maintenance of your reputation.
You must die to having the
final answer and getting your own way.
You must die to your
unfaltering confidence in you.
You must die.
And nothing
helps “kill us” like private personal worship does. Your private devotional
life has the power to kill the “me-ism” that is inside you (and me) that will
again and again cause you to be in the way of, rather than part of, whatever it
is that God is doing at the moment. Private personal worship is it an effective
tool of grace in the hands of God to kill those things in you that must die in
order that you be what you have been called to be and do what you have been
appointed to do in your place of ministry.
