08 How to Die to Self.
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Last week we left off understanding that we are living in humility when we are living in obedience to God, which He tells us in Luke 9:23 is through the denial of self to His will and His ways.
That may have left you thinking…Okay great. That’s cool. But how do we do that? How do I deny myself? How do I die to myself? Join me in your frustration. I can do many things but it seems as if the one thing I cannot do is be obedient to God. So how can we be obedient to God? How can we deny ourselves?
Let’s talk about it for a few minutes. Although complicated, learning how to die to self is essential in the following of Jesus.
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Let’s begin by defining dying to self.
Before we can learn how to die to self we must firstly learn what it is.
The denial of self, the dying to self, is the living to God. Not living for God, but living to God. That means giving Him authority over your life, allowing the kingdom of heaven to become all in your heart. This is so important to know. You absolutely must understand what the denial of self is before you can begin the action of it.
William Law wrote a book called death to self, of which he says that the ‘dying to self and the living to God is the exchange of one life for another, the losing the one to gain the other.’
And I love that he uses the word exchange…we die to self by exchanging control and authority of our lives to God. We exchange our life and our desires for the life given through the Holy Spirit of God and the desires in which He gives us.
But how do we do all of this? How do we exchange control and authority of our lives to God? How do we give our living to God?
We do it through the daily descension of self and resignation to the Father’s will.
We need to descend each day into complete, helpless dependence upon God (which if you remember from previous episodes is the most God honoring thing we can do).
One way to effectively do this is through the ascension of Christ in our minds.
Think of the depth in which Jesus descended. That point is immeasurably below any point we have ever reached…and the point which He descended from is immeasurably higher than our greatest imagination.
Jesus, who is God, descended from the throne of heaven, and all its glory, which is greater than our greatest imagination, to become human flesh. That alone is a descension so immense we cannot comprehend the humility of Jesus to do that. But Jesus did not stop there. He could have chosen to be born into a wealthy family, to parents with power, but instead he chose to be born to two people of little social status, in a city of small significance, in a little lowly manger of even smaller significance. Jesus’ birth was a humble one. But He didn’t stop getting lower there either. Through the course of His life, He chose to descend even farther, denying His right to rule the earth, becoming a servant to all, taking the lowest position among man by dying for all mankind on a cross.
In this gigantic distance of descension that I just described between the heaven of glory from which Jesus came and the lowliness of his death, is what (as previously mentioned in an earlier episode) Charles Spurgeon says is room for your gratitude. And I say in that immeasurable gap is room for your humility.
This is why Jesus tells us in Luke 9:23 to deny ourselves and to take up our cross daily to follow Him. You take up your cross daily by reminding yourself of what happened on the cross. There is a reason why every author in the New Testament points to the cross...because that is where the cure for every spiritual disease resides, including lack of humility.
When we look to the cross the way I just did, reminding ourselves of the immeasurable descension of Jesus, we are led to ascend Him in greater reverence. In other words, the more we recognize the magnitude of what Jesus did for us, the more we will revere Him and uphold Him in our hearts.
That is part of how we partake in the daily descension of self. We look at the immense greatness of God and we praise Him for who He is and what He’s done. When our focus is on that, we lose thought of ourselves. We aren’t thinking about me, me, me, but Christ in me.
We aren’t thinking about me, me, me, but all that Christ has done for me. It puts Christ in His rightful place, at the center of our thoughts and the center of our lives.
That exercise, if you will, we just did by looking at Jesus’ descension is an act that helps place ourselves before God with utter helplessness, allowing us to sink down in our nothingness, giving God full authority of our life and letting ourselves be led by the Spirit.
That is our role in the exchange of living to God, the descension of self.
Descend each day. D.E.D. Dead. I like that acronym and would encourage you to apply that to your life in pursuit of death to self. You become dead to self though the process of DED. Descending each day.
Now I’ve heavily emphasized the importance of descent in the act of death to self, but I don’t want you to overlook the importance of doing that daily.
Most of you listening brush your teeth after you wake up, and you brush your teeth before you go to bed. You do it day and night. So you should also do with your descent before God. You should seek to position your heart to a place of lowliness day and night. And let’s be honest. How many of us do that? It is so important that we do.
Psalm 1 says that a man is blessed if he meditates on the Word ‘day and night’, because He is one who is allowing God to be all in His life. He is living to God.
I’ve said in an earlier episode that not only is humility necessary for salvation, but it's necessary for sanctification. We are sanctified in Christ when we participate in the descension of self and the ascension of Christ DAILY.
Another thing I want to encourage you with is something that Andrew Murray says in his book called ‘humility’. He says that the actual action of dying to self is not our work but the Lord’s. He writes that nature can never overcome nature, which means that self can never cast out self. We need God to cast out our flesh.
What does this mean? This means it is our job to put ourselves in a position of descent to allow for God to cast out self and become all in our lives. That’s all that means.
And my hope is that you would know the position we must be in to allow God to become all in our lives is one of absolute lowliness. From Isaiah 57:15, we know that God dwells with those who are lowly and contrite in spirit.
It's not your job to change the condition of your heart. It is your job to change the position of your heart.
If you place yourself before God in complete submission and in recognition of your need for Him, you allow the Spirit of God to work in and through you.
Now I’ve directly mentioned how we do that through the ascension of Christ in our minds, but we can also descend before God physically as well, which helps aid in us doing that spiritually. I believe I’ve grown so much in my pursuit of humility before God through my change in position in prayer and in worship. I’m talking about praying on your knees, which is an act of surrender and resignation, and worshiping with your hands lifted to the Lord, which is also an act of surrender and resignation.
You would be so surprised at how different the posture of your heart is when you physically place yourself in these vulnerable positions. It becomes much easier to resign your will to God’s when you are on your knees in prayer. It is the same way with worship…it becomes much easier to recognize the power of God and the nothingness of self when you have your hands raised.
These actions make us so incredibly vulnerable, and they remind us of how much we need God. They put into perspective our place before God. He is much greater, bigger, and more powerful than we are, and these actions position ourselves to a lower place in which God dwells.
Again it's not your job to change the condition of your heart. That’s the Lord’s. It is your job to change the position of your heart. And if you place yourself before God in a position like the ones I’ve just described, you greater allow for the Spirit of God to work in and through you.
I can tell you from personal experience I’ve felt the presence of God more strongly while on my knees in prayer and with my hands raised in worship than I have with my head bowed for a few seconds or with my hands in my pockets.
And these physical postures are biblical. You see in countless places in Scripture where we ought to bow before the Lord in prayer and worship and lift up our hands to Him in melody and praise.
The key to a higher, more holy life is down, further down!!!
If you desire holiness before the Lord, that is found not up but down, through the descension of self and the resignation of your will to God’s.
Next week we will talk about the importance of serving and what that should look like in our life. For those of you reading, I hope these episodes have been sharpening for you in your faith and your walk with God.
I love you all.
God bless!
