Counting Everything as a Loss

I'm hooked. Elisabeth Elliot is not just an amazing role model or a wonderful writer. She's one of the most passionate women I've ever known there to be for Christ. Passion and Purity is now my current read of hers and can I just say...wow.

"When the will of God crosses the will of man," Addison Leitch said, "somebody has to die." Life requires countless "little" deaths -- occasions when we are given the chance to say no to self and yes to God. It is not that everything that has anything to do with ourselves is in itself wicked and deserving of death. It did not mean that when Jesus said, "Not my will..." There could not have been even the smallest part of His will that was wicked. It was a choice to lay down everything -- the good He had done and the good He might do if He was permitted to live -- for the love of God. The same choice is offered to us. 

There is a big however. It is this: We are not meant to die merely in order to be dead. God could not want that for the creatures to whom He has given the breath of life. We die in order to live.

This reminds me of the verse in Luke that I memorized this past semester... "Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it." Whether we think we're doing something good or righteous is irrelevant. Following God's will is the only option for us to be equally yoked with Christs' desires. As hard as it may be, it will produce the most fruitful of all results.