I’ve been thinking about dying to self, about the consecrated life, and about what it means to live as “crucified with Christ.”
It costs you everything. There’s really no other way.
I remember in younger years the overwhelming feeling that this was all crazy. Who would do this? Who would give up everything to follow Jesus? Who would endure what felt like the annihilation of self for this Jesus?
And what would come on the other side? What is the abundant life promised? What would it feel like? Would I still be me?
Would it even be any fun?
It’s like someone told me to dive deep into this pool of faith, sending me into a dark underwater cave where I would surely drown. I would die here with all this surrendering and giving up my rights and turning from sin. I would die. I would lose everything that was me.
But Jesus was that great. Jesus was that true and that real. He would take my life, and I’d be reborn into the person I was supposed to be. I would find my new life in Christ.
I wrote in the margin of my Bible: I want the me that is You.
I started the deep, suffocating dive. I kept swimming through the dark cave’s passage that was the only way to real life, real breath on the other side.
You lose your life and then you find it. There is no other way.