love the grave?

(Part 3)

Earlier that same Sunday morning I read Psalm 102 and at the end of that passage it says this:


23He broke my strength in midlife,
    cutting short my days.
24 But I cried to him, “O my God, who lives forever,
    don’t take my life while I am so young!

And I thought that God might just end my life ... I was having thoughts that I might die. This verse wasn't the only one to come up - there was this one too...

Psalm 30:

8 I cried out to you, O Lord.
    I begged the Lord for mercy, saying,
9 “What will you gain if I die,
    if I sink into the grave?
Can my dust praise you?
    Can it tell of your faithfulness?
10 Hear me, Lord, and have mercy on me.
    Help me, O Lord.”

there were a few others as well ... and earlier in the summer before we moved I had struggled for a few days with that fear as well. I eventually dismissed it however, because fear is not from God and I knew it was a lie of the enemy. But here it was again - except this time I didn't really feel afraid ... I was willing to accept it if it was indeed God's will.

Because my senses are still so dull in all of this silence, I think I got a few wires crossed, and I am now finally getting down to the truth of what He has actually been trying to show me from the beginning. So NOW I came to realize that it isn't about my actual death, but this whole thing is in regards to 'the grave' that I had read about from Murray. This passage below is from the chapter called 'Christ Our Life' in the Master's Indwelling...

The sentence of death is on everything that is of nature. But are we willing to accept it, do we cherish it? and are we not rather trying to escape the sentence or to forget it? We do not believe fully that the sentence of death is on us. Whatever is of nature must die. Ask God to make you willing to believe with your heart that to die with Christ is the only way to live in Him. You ask, “But must it then be dying every day?” Yes, beloved; Jesus lived every day in the prospect of the cross, and we, in the power of His victorious life, being made conformable to His death, must rejoice every day in going down with Him into death. 
Take an illustration. Take an oak of some hundred years’ growth. How was that oak born? In a grave. The acorn was planted in the ground, a grave was made for it that the acorn might die. It died and disappeared; it cast roots downward, and it cast shoots upward, and now that tree has been standing a hundred years. Where is it standing? In its grave; all the time in the very grave where the acorn died; it has stood there stretching its roots deeper and deeper into that earth in which its grave was made, and yet, all the time, though it stood in the very grave where it had died, it has been growing higher, and stronger, and broader, and more beautiful. And all the fruit it ever bore, and all the foliage that adorned it year by year, it owed to that grave in which its roots are cast and kept. Even so Christ owes everything to His death and His grave. And we, too, owe everything to that grave of Jesus. Oh! let us live every day rooted in the death of Jesus. Be not afraid, but say: “To my own will I will die; to human wisdom, and human strength, and to the world I will die; for it is in the grave of my Lord that His life has its beginning, and its strength and its glory.”


Oh my ... that is stunning.

I haven't fully wrapped my head around this idea ... but I know that these continual sins, these idols in me that seem to be ever present must die ... am I willing? My new self says yes! - but my flesh is fighting like crazy!!

That day as that young woman prayed over me ... I felt assured that God would not take my life just yet - that He still had things He wanted to do with me, and through me. But this death MUST come first. So how do I fully enter into the grave? How do I get my flesh to stop fighting and give up ... I want my Spirit to win! More thinking, more prayer.

Romans 6:

Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? 2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? 3 Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? 4 For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.

Colossians 2:

11 When you came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical procedure. Christ performed a spiritual circumcision—the cutting away of your sinful nature.[c] 12 For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.

13 You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. 14 He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. 15 In this way, he disarmed[d] the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.