Victory of the Heart
Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me.
Luke 9:23 NLT
Dying to self is not strictly the idea of giving up possessions: it is giving up the right to myself. My ways, my wants, and my demands are yielded to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Want a full, deep, intimate experience of Jesus? Give up the right to yourself and hand your heart and will over to Jesus and there find “joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8).
Naturally, a man regards his right to himself as the finest thing he has, yet it is the last bridge that prevents Jesus Christ having His way in a life.
The approaches to Jesus are innumerable; the result of coming to Him can be only one—the dethroning of my right to myself, or I stop short somewhere.
Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself.
The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest.
Oswald Chambers, Disciples Indeed (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1955), 35.
When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught and you don’t sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ – THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient, loving silence—THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When you are content with any food, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God–THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any impuctuality or any annoyance–THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or to record your own good works, or to itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown–THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When you stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagant spiritual insensibility—and endure it as Jesus endured it– THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy, nor question God while your own needs are far greater and you are in desperate circumstances—THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart—THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
When like Paul-you can throw all your suffering on Jesus, thus converting it into a means of knowing  His overcoming grace; and can say from a surrendered heart, “most gladly,” therefore, do “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake”(2 Cor. 12:7-11)–THAT IS DYING TO SELF.
Are you DEAD yet?
In these last days, the Spirit would bring us to the cross. “That I may know Him…being made conformable unto His death†(Phil 3:10).
Anonymous, Bethany Publishing House Tract
