Dying to Live!

Firstly awesome awesome thought provoking messages that you have posted here Mr Manan-Istok!! (Amazing how they have internet in the middle east!! Haha) Thanks for sharing these thoughts with us all.

Ok so this post is in relation to one of the things that we touched on briefly at our last chat night. After hearing the stories I was then sharing about a common thread (a bit of an understatement!) I see with Jesus' teachings about how surrender = gain, and dying = living.

So lo and behold after a late Saturday night with the Jonses I ended up missing church and went up the road to do my own study time at my local cafe. I've recently taken to re-reading and studying Rob Bell's book 'Love Wins' --> Side note if you ever want a really good wrist workout try taking notes on this book!! You pretty much write it out line for line coz there's so much profoundness contained within those covers. So anyway to my surprise the chapter that I was up to was titled 'Dying to live'. I love this concept and just wanted to share a few excerpts as a refresher and in light of what we have already discussed regarding this topic:

"Jesus talks about death and rebirth constantly, his and ours. He calls us to let go, turn away, renounce, confess, repent and leave behind the old ways. He talks of the life that will come from his own death, and he promises that life will flow into us in small ways as we die to our egos, our pride, our need to be right, our stubborn insistence that we deserve to get our way. When we cling with white knuckles to our sins and our hostility we're like a tree that won't let it's leaves go. There can't be a spring if we're stuck in the fall (autumn!)"

"Lose your life and find it he says. That's how the world works, that's how the soul works, that's how life works when you're dying to live."

So I hope you enjoyed that as I just wanted to share these excerpts that I noted over an extra large mocha last Sunday. I hope that we can see in our lives opportunities where we can take up this kingdom living and follow Jesus' way, where we can see where we can surrender so ultimately we can be DYING TO LIVE!

Also a while back I wrote this down and have recently been referring to it as my little mantra. I hope it encourages you, and feel free to share in this mantra with me and we can all be mantra partners (haha I just wanted to say that coz it sounds weird!!)

Here it is:

i wanna live for something more,
i wanna live for your cause,
this life of mine i choose to give,
may i die to self so i can truly live.

Let's live our lives DYING TO LIVE!!
1love!