This title may sound like an apocalyptic message and it may well be – in more ways than one. For today, we will focus on the message dying to self. It’s time for the Church to understand that being the Church is not always about prosperity, your gifts and callings, or even your church and its ‘vision’ except that they edify or build up the entire Body of Christ. It’s time for the Church to understand what being the Church means.
Years ago, when I came out of prison, I began to warn people of the dangers of falling in love with money. And today I’m finding there is even more that needs to die within religion and the religious hearts of those within the church. I’m not calling for anybody to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself, so this message has come to me first and now I use whatever means I have been given to share it with you.
It’s time for the foolishness of building kingdoms unto men or climbing the church’s social ladder to cease. It’s time for lifting up Jesus and Him alone. It’s time to put away the minor things, and take up the major things. It’s time to eat the meat and be weaned of milk. It’s time to understand the seriousness of the hour. It’s time to grow up in Jesus.
A full-grown, mature Church is one that unites herself in one accord in the ministry of the saints and in the ministry unto the Lord. Self is not just laid aside, it is put away, it doesn’t exist and can’t. Self melts away into the greater good of the Body. It is without individual identity except that we know one another by our love. The spiritual recognize each other by their love for the greater good of the Body, not the manifestation of the personhood of an individual.
Have you ever experienced the kind of love that is irresistible? Irresistible love is a term many have thrown around without a lot of depth. But the kind of love the Lord has for His Bride, manifests itself differently than anything we can produce in our ‘self’. The Lord’s love is irresistible. The Lord’s love covers, heals and restores and melts away our ‘self’. When you encounter the Lord’s love, you will die to ‘self’ quickly and without resistance because it is absolutely irresistible. You are a part of His Body and you will recognize others by their love!
John 13: 34-35″A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
More to come…….
