Mostly Dead is Slightly Alive

The Art of Dying

by Dewey Compton

"The old You is dead already. Embrace the real you by ignoring the old you."

So what's on my mind? Death! Here is another one of my favorite movies - The Princess Bride.

I was in the shower this morning and listening to music and for some reason, I started conversing in my mind with HS about the beauty and freedom of death. Death can be looked at in many different ways and most people look at the negative side. 

I find this topic very fascinating and more discussion needed today. Let me explain. 

I remember in science class that a seed must go into the ground, die and then a completely new thing rises out of the ground called a plant. This plant is entirely different from the seed. One had to die in order for the other to live. This is the same with us. 

Old things in us must die in order for us to truly live. Now for many, it happened when they first became a believer in Jesus. We died to our old self, our old way of doing things and said yes to Jesus and became a new creation like the plant. The enemy wants us to believe the reality that our flesh is alive and will always struggle in sin. Notice I said reality. It is real that our flesh sins and struggles against the spirit here on Earth. But we are told to set our minds on things above, where Jesus is seated. When we do, all this old stuff just falls away.

The Kingdom reality is that Jesus didn't just die FOR us so when we die from this earthly body we get to go to heaven. He died AS us. He took care of the sin problem once and for all so that we can live in true freedom NOW on Earth and help others become free. 

So I would like to make the argument that if we are struggling with negative stuff like hate, anger, gossip, unforgiveness, bitterness, etc. in our life, we do not fully understand we are dead to those things. Look at a dead person. They are no longer struggling. We tend to live more like the Walking Dead trying to fix our dead selves instead of just dying. Have you ever seen a zombie trying to bandage its wounds, use crutches, taking medicine? Well if you look into many churches in America, you might see some. Ouch! But things are changing.

There is a beautiful thing about dying. When we go through it in many areas of our life, it provides incredible freedom and releases from the old ways. So what things in your life do you need to acknowledge are dead already? Think of it like this. When Jesus was buried, He buried our old nature of sin. It was like all the seeds of sin put in the ground. They have died now and an entirely new life of freedom is waiting to sprout up in our lives. But we have to believe it and see it and water it.

My encouragement to you is to practice being dead to all the negative things in your life. You are not mostly dead, you are truly dead and the new you, the true you is ready to grow up into all things godly.