DYING TO LIVE: INTRODUCTION

“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death” (Revelation 12:11).

A tax collector was sitting in the marketplace, minding his business when all at once he feels the piercing gaze of someone standing nearby.  He looks up to see the most joyful, loving eyes.  As their eyes are fixed on one another for a moment, suddenly the stranger says, “Follow Me” (Matthew 9:9).  Knowing little about this unusual man, somehow Matthew knows he has been chosen.  He gets up and begins to follow the Master.His life is forever changed.

We are all the workmanship of God, made in His image.  We were created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He prepared in advance for us (Ephesians 2:10).  Everyone is called to do something in the Kingdom of God.  It may be to successfully raise children who may one day walk in the five-fold ministry or to successfully raise the dead.  The important thing is to realize we have been chosen.  Matthew was chosen.  We too have been chosen.  But are we inclined to seek the Lord to discover His purpose and mission for our lives?   One thing I personally have learned is that “you have not because you ask not” (James 4:2).

Salvation was the easy part.  Becoming Spirit-filled was not quite so hard either.  But sanctification is a process that goes on and on and the hardest of the three.  2 Timothy 2:20-21 says, “In a large house [the body of Christ; the House of God] there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some are for noble purposes and some for ignoble.  If a man cleanses himself from the latter, he will be an instrument for noble purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.”  Besides the enemy, who is a very real adversary, I have to deal with getting ME out of God’s way.  If I can keep Jesus Christ as my focus instead of me, I’ll do alright.

“Focus” is a tiny word that carries a great deal of weight.  Not surprising, the easier things to focus on in life seem to be the weights that hinder our Christian walk.  On the other hand, the harder focus is the sanctification process which should be an ongoing, intentional thing.  The Apostle Paul knew about this intentional process when he said in 1 Thessalonians 4:3, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified…” and also when he said in Romans 8:13, “…but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”  That is sanctification.  It is the process of dying to temptations to the point that we eventually react to temptation the same way a corpse reacts to temptation—not at all.

When we received Christ, our lives ceased to belong to us.  1 Corinthians 6:19-20 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.”  As God’s possession, what kind of life does He desire for us to live?

Paul, again described it in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  The days we get caught up in the cares of life (Matthew 6:25), when we forget to put our armor on (Ephesians 6:11), when we do not take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5), or we get caught up in our own selfish desires (Romans 8:5); we miss the doors of opportunity the Lord has opened for us to minister to others.  Day after day of selfish pursuits continue and pretty soon we find ourselves drifting into exile while at the same time the Lord uses adverse circumstances to draw us back to Himself and His narrow path.  Why does He exert the effort?  One reason is that He loves our fellowship.  Our intimacy with Him is pleasing to our Creator.  The Father created us by His will and for His pleasure.  Revelation 4:11 says, “…for you have created all things, and by Your will they were created and have their being.”  Another reason is for the sake of the call.  You and I are “God’s workmanship [His treasured possession], created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which He prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).  I’ve learned that when there is a call on your life, whether big or small, the Lord will chase you to your grave trying to fulfill it in you (Romans 11:29 KJV).  Certainly, you could turn your back on Him and never fulfill your calling.  Looking back over my own life, I can see the continual hand of the Lord keeping me and even preparing me, using the circumstances of a life gone off course to gently guide me to the path He had chosen for me.

The key is to seek God for the recognition of His call on our lives.  We must seek Him to reveal what His purpose and His destiny is for our lives and then begin to walk it out.  Then, we must submit to the conditions of the call.  This may be to study, whether it be to take correspondence courses or to go to Bible college.  It may be to submit to a mentor to receive training.  You may become a servant in your local church to learn that greatness comes through humility and an attitude of servitude.  Any or all of these possibilities will be a divine requirement of growth or surrender.

Finally, we must press forward in the call knowing fully that we are backed up by the sum of the attributes, glory and virtue of Jesus.  2 Peter 1:3-4 says, “As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life an godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”  Jesus Christ offers Himself as the full and complete portion of the Church.  Therefore, we can hold onto the promises of God through Him (and only through Him) to fulfill the call of our destiny.

Let’s think, for a moment, about the average lifestyle of an American, pre-saved and saved alike.  BUSY!  That’s the typical scenario.  Then one day after they have not been feeling well, they go to the doctor and after running some tests, he informs them that they are terminally ill and they only have a few months to live.  All of a sudden, life is pulled out of the fast lane and their focus goes from this great expanse of activity down to this current situation that is about to change (or end) their whole life.  For the Christian, the focus shrinks down to our only HOPE—Jesus Christ.  Now the things of the earth begin to grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.  Glory, because that is where the healing is found.  Grace, because in this situation, we need all we can get.  In any struggle in which we find ourselves, 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

From that point on, days are spent focusing on important questions of life such like, “What will happen to my family when I am gone?”  “Will God heal me or will I leave this world?”  “Am I ready to meet the Lord?”  “Do I know Him like I have professed to know Him?”  The focus suddenly shifts from you to others and to God, who alone can do what medicine cannot.  Your relationship begins to grow as His power is perfected in your weakness.  All your thoughts begin to be focused on communion with Jesus.

Hold that picture in your mind.  What if you could live that way without physically dying?  Are there any parallels between what we might experience if we were physically dying and dying to our flesh to live that way?  What can near death experiences for the believer show us about being dead to the flesh and alive in Christ?

It was 1971.  My family was living in the Mojave Desert in Ridgecrest, California.  We had a ranch-style dream house with a stable in back where we helped care for the many horses boarded there.  It was my first day to ride by myself.  I was with my dad and two of his friends.  We rode out into the hot desert together.  Somehow, Dad and the others rode a little ahead of me as I was more comfortable with nice, slow walking.  Then, in a split second it seemed my horse wheeled around in the opposite direction and took off running as fast as he could possibly go.  (Turns out a snake had spooked him.)  I was not able to hold on and eventually fell under the horse and was trampled on the right side of my head.  My skull was crushed and his hoof went into my brain.   After an excruciatingly long time to get to the hospital, my parents were given the prognosis of my death.  But against all odds, by the power of Almighty God, after having my crushed skull removed I went home two weeks after the accident.  I received a new skull one year later and after five years of no seizures or neurological problems I was released with a clean bill of health!  Truly, the Lord He is God!

Twenty one years later, in 1992, I went into labor with my first and only child Abigail Grace.  Because of an unknown fibroid tumor sharing space with her in the womb, after she was delivered my entire reproductive system prolapsed and I nearly bled to death.  Once again, my life was hanging in the balance for several hours, but also once again God performed an undeniable miracle when there was absolutely no hope and I went home five days later with a perfectly healthy baby girl.

One year later, without any warning of pain or symptoms, I had an ovary burst and I bled internally for five days.  I just happened to have scheduled a surgery in September of that year for November 4^th.  I had a sense in my spirit that I was dying, but thought perhaps that it would happen during my surgery.  When they opened me up for surgery they found the bleeding and stopped it.  One more time the providential hand of God intervened and a virtual death sentence was commuted to a life sentence.

It was the early morning of January 20, 1997.  My city, (Murfreesboro, Tennessee) had just experienced three violent tornados ripping through several of our densely populated neighborhoods.  I had experienced a dream just weeks prior about appearing before the Judgment Seat of Christ and my life was on a large map.  The hand of the Lord pointed to a position on the map and said, “This is where you are.”  Then his finger slid down a ways and He said, “This is where you were supposed to be.”  That dream really bothered me.  I had been working long and hard in the ministry for many years and the Lord was always faithful to give me a measure of success.  What was it that I had missed?  I cried out to the Lord after the dream and begged Him to tell me why I had experienced nearly dying so many times and yet had been obviously spared by a miracle every time (I had two prior experiences before I was eight as well).  I desperately wanted to know.

That morning, I was sleeping on the sofa at my parents’ house.  Our family had spent the night there just in case another storm came.  David and Abbey were in a back bedroom.  I wanted to stay in the living room and pray.  It was about 2:00 a.m. and I was in a light sleep when suddenly the television came on and went off again.  Thinking that the Lord was warning me to look for a weather update, I turned the television on and flipped through the channels expecting to see the warning.  When I found nothing and everything outside seemed to be calm, I flipped to Trinity Broadcasting Network.  Betty Maltz was the guest that morning.  She was telling about a book she had written years ago about her death experience and how the Lord sent her back.  She testified that when she asked the Lord why He let her die and then sent her back, His reply was, “I allowed you to know what it was like to die so that you would learn how to live.”  When she made that statement the Holy Spirit spoke to me so clearly and said, “Monica, I allowed you to experience what it was like to die so that you would know how to live and so that you might teach others.”

I was never pronounced dead.  I never had an out-of-body experience.  I can best describe my experiences as being picked up by a huge hand and suspended over death like a canyon and just held there until the miracles, the ministry, and the healing was complete. Looking back, the Lord showed me some things that happened in each experience that parallel what powerful ministry could be like if I could just die to myself and walk in the power of the Spirit.  The Lord showed me that in my entire life, more miracles were released in my death than in my life.  He accomplished more in my helpless states than in all my ministry experiences up to that time.

In the next few blogs, I want to show you nine simple truths that the Lord showed me while taking me back through my experiences after that night.  These are what you can experience when you are dead to yourself.

(Read in Dying to Live: Truth Number One)