Last night I read the January 15th post in My Utmost for His Highest and stopped in my tracks. Chambers was talking about a White Funeral and I immediately knew this was something I've been needing lately in my life. He defines a White Funeral as "the burial of the old life....a death with only one resurrection-a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ". As I read the beginning I told myself, "You've done this, you've given your life to missions, to orphans, to discipling people. You've done this." And then God got me. (He has an uncanny way of doing that sometimes.) The very next sentence I read said this, "You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been. We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death. It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death." Am I a Christian? Absolutely! Am I questioning that here? Absolutely not! But have I had this definable moment when I have "come to my last days"? A day that I can mark as my last day? I love what Oswald says next, and as a result of this, I will always mark January 15th as my White Funeral.
"Is there a place in your life to which you go back in memory with humility and overwhelming gratitude, so that you can honestly proclaim, 'Yes, it was then, at my 'white funeral', that I made an agreement with God.'.....Once you truly realize this is God's will, you will enter into the process of sanctification as a natural response. Are you willing to experience that 'white funeral' now? Will you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends on you." ~ Oswald Chambers
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