An Amazing Thought

I found this on a blog called Raw Christianity by Gunner Gundersen. Here is the link to the whole posting http://rawchristianity.wordpress.com/2006/11/02/signing-your-life-away/. I am posting the part that really ministered to me. Be Blessed! Mike.

This is a piercing illustration of the call of discipleship. Discipleship is a call to die. It is not a call to live or a call to follow or even a call to suffer. It is a call to die. And when you answer that call, you cross the point of no return. You step over the line in the sand. You forsake everything and you embrace death because you believe so fiercely and so joyfully in something greater than your life.Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Esther said, “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4:16).If you are a true believer in Jesus Christ and a soldier following His orders, you have already died. You have already decided that your life is no longer your own, that your interests are not only subservient but nonexistent, and that your personal ambitions are meaningless. Life is no longer about your comforts or your desires or your preferences or your methods or your insights or your dreams. Your life is not yours anymore. Remember, you’re dead. Therefore, you should not be surprised when you are called to die twenty different times a day in order to fulfill His cause and follow His calling. Death shouldn’t hurt or bother someone who’s already dead. I don’t think the signers of the Declaration of Independence would’ve been surprised if they had been captured by the British and hung together on fifty-six gallows along the streets of Boston.In the next hour you will face many moment-by-moment decisions, and what you choose to think or feel or say or do in each of those moments will reflect whether you are still living in you or whether Christ is living in you. I cannot help but think that if we truly believed that we have died with Christ and have been raised up with Christ, we wouldn’t flinch in the face of sacrifice or wallow in the swamp of self-pity or be impressed with our own battle-weariness.You already signed your life away. You already died. Now live like it.