Greatest Opportunity

Greatest Opportunity: It seems that one of the greatest opportunities we have is just the opportunity to die to self. John 12:24 – “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”. Uncle Willie Jamieson told about seeing in the middle of a river in China where a lot of the filth of the city and sewage flowed, a beautiful lily growing. That seed knew how to “refuse the evil, and choose the good,” and as it died there it could produce that beauty. 

Whenever people are truly dying to self, you see in their lives the product of that death bringing a joy as in the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance”. It doesn’t matter the surroundings; there will always be these things produced when there is a willingness to die. It is also beyond the place of death to self where the true fellowship and the presence of God is. In the Old Testament in order for the high priest to enter into the holiest of all places where God’s presence was, there had to be continual burnt offering being made but there were also other sacrifices that had to be slain, and the blood was used to make the way open to that holiest of all places where the ark was. In order for us to enter into fellowship with God, we must be willing to present our bodies as a living offering. There has to be that willingness to die to self and even then, we would be completely unworthy except for the sacrifice that Christ made enabling the way to be opened into the place where the presence of God is.  

Christ said in John 17:3 – “this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”. When we go to a funeral of one of God’s servants or faithful people, we by faith, realize that they are now entered into a closer fellowship with the One above than ever before and by this, God also would be trying to help us to see that it is by dying to self daily that we can enter into the sweetest of all fellowships. It is so easy for us to think it is what we are doing that would be important but it seems, at least to me, that the opportunity we have of just dying daily is one of the greatest opportunities we have, as this is where the miracle of life springing forth can take place and through it, we can enter into a closer fellowship with the One above than ever before. It wasn’t that so many, like the foolish virgins had done a great deal wrong, but the thing that He had to tell them in the end was just “I know you not”. Why ? Probably because they had never just learned the value of dying completely to self, that the miracle of life and fellowship could take place. 

John Stancliff