Dying to Ourselves Daily!

Hello All! This can be a bit long, but I had to share because I was so convicted! Check out what is going on at www.designersgenes.com Love you MUCH!!--Tiffaney K. Draper

From the desk of Bill Keller of LivePrayer.com

(1 Corinthians 15:31; Romans 8:4-13; Galatians 5:16; Galatians 2:20)


Dying to self daily is what Paul spoke of so often. It is how we walk in the
"Spirit" and not in the "flesh" as we are instructed in Romans Chapter 8 and
Galatians Chapter 5. The whole issue of dying to self daily is the absolute
key to living a victorious life in Christ. It literally means that you have
to die to self DAILY! This is why so many people who are saved, love the
Lord, live beneath their blessings and in constant turmoil. This is how
people who know Christ as their Savior end up committing adultery, cheat
people, lie, get in bondage to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling,
shopping, greed, and anything else people become enslaved to. They don't die
to self each day and end up walking in the "flesh" and NOT the "Spirit."

People wonder all the time how a pastor, a deacon, an elder, someone in the
leadership of God's church could leave their wife and run off with another
woman. People wonder all the time how a Sunday School teacher who loves the
Lord could neglect her children and family because of alcohol. Maybe you are
wondering how you could be raising your hands to Jesus, speaking in tongues,
and being used by God to touch lives one day, and sinning against God the
next. The answer is when you fail to die to self each day, you are walking
in the "flesh," not the "Spirit."

The question that needs to be addressed today is HOW does a person "die to
self?" The first step is an action, something that you must do. Dying to
self is a conscious choice that you must make, one nobody can make for you.
It is the act of surrendering your life completely to Christ. The reason
God's Word talks about dying to self DAILY is because it is something that
we must do each and every day. Our life with Christ is not for an hour or
two on Sunday, but literally 24/7. It is critical to make the choice to die
to self each and every day.

Since this is something you must do each day, I do it and counsel others to
do it the moment you wake up in the morning. As I first open my eyes to a
new day, before I do anything I take a moment and thank God for a day that
was not promised to me and make the conscious choice to completely surrender
my life to Him that day. I literally tell God to take my life and use it for
His glory that day, to use me as an instrument of blessing. When we get
saved, we not only ask Christ into our heart and life by faith, but we give
our very lives to Him. In dying to self each day, we are reaffirming that
our life doesn't belong to us any longer, it is His.

At the moment we are born again, we receive the promise of the "Comforter,"
or the Holy Spirit. Each Believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit to empower
them and guide them throughout their life. It is literally the power of
Almighty God living within each person who has given their heart and life to
Christ by faith. As you surrender your life afresh to Christ at the start of
each day, you are allowing your life to be controlled by the Holy Sprit and
not by your flesh. It is no longer you but God that is in complete control
of your life. You have traded in your thoughts and desires for God's
thoughts and desires. It is not YOU that is living, it is Christ living in
you as Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20.

This whole process takes only a few minutes of time alone with the Lord, but
it is the most important few minutes of your day. When you don't go through
this process each and every morning, you wake up, start going through your
day, and not only does it feel like the day is weighing you down, you don't
have that confidence. The reality is, the day IS weighing you down because
you are operating in your strength and not the Lord's, and the lack of
confidence comes from the fact you are in control of your life and not
Christ.

Sadly, some people go days, even weeks without really dying to self, and it
usually takes the consequences of their poor choices during that time to
bring them back to the Lord. Like I say often, your way doesn't work, God's
way works! Let me give you some advice out of my love for you. You can never
run your life better than God can. The sooner you realize that, the more
peace, joy, and abundance you will know during this journey through life.

There is probably no more critical a message I will ever share with you in
living a victorious life in Christ than the one today. All of the benefits
in God's Word exist and are available to those who believe, but there is a
price to pay and that price is our very life surrendered, yielded to the
Lord. It is a choice, an act, that nobody can force you to commit. The
important thing for you to hear today is that it is not something you do
just once and forget about. It is something that you must do DAILY! EVERY
DAY! WITHOUT FAIL! Each morning when you wake up, you have to make the
conscious choice to die to self, to surrender your life to Christ, and walk
in the "Spirit" instead of the "flesh."

I love you and care about you so much. The difference between a person who
knows the Lord as their Savior living a defeated life and a victorious life,
lies in what I am sharing with you today. Please, save your money. You don't
need to waste it listening to Tony Robbins or the motivational speakers of
the world lie to you that you can do it on your own, and you don't need to
spend it on books and tapes from preachers who preach a feel good Gospel but
forget to tell you about the sacrifice involved. The key to living a
victorious life in Christ lies in you waking up each morning and making the
conscious choice to die to self and allow Christ to control your life.

The fact is, the Bible says that if you have asked Christ into you heart and
life by faith, it is no longer your life, that it belongs to Him. The Word
says we have been "bought with a price." So in essence, each day you are
only giving the Lord what already belongs to Him anyway. Remember my message
in the past on what really happens when we get saved? We are literally
giving our life to Christ. It is no longer ours, but is now His. The reality
is, each morning when we wake up, we have to make the choice to die to self
so that Christ can live within us during that day. If we don't do this each
and every day when we wake up, we will soon find ourselves walking in the
"flesh" and not the "Spirit."

I will be praying for you today. Praying that you will sit down and read
this message over and over. This is the meat and potatoes of the Word. This
is where the rubber meets the road in regard to our Christian walk. This is
the part that nobody really wants to talk about since we love the benefits
of being saved, but we really don't want to think about the price that Jesus
paid or the sacrifice we have to make each day. You MUST think about it
since it is the difference between you living a defeated life and living a
victorious life. To live that victorious life in Christ, to walk in His
victory, you have to die to self each day so that you are walking in the
"Sprit" and not the "flesh" so that it is Christ, not you that lives.

In His love and service,
Your friend and brother in Christ,
Bill Keller