Here is the revelation that is shaping my life today – death holds more than life can ever offer. “Dying means gain,” this is the greatest way to live. When death losses its sting of finality, when death losses its sting of loss, when death is embraced for its beauty, life can be embraced in its fullness. I can now live in the way that life was designed to be lived, to bring Heaven to earth for others. It’s only when I know Him in all His beauty that death becomes victory and life becomes focused. When more of Him becomes the fullness of my passion, then life makes sense and has clarity, it’s all Him.
Philippians 1:21-24 TPT
[21] My true life is the Anointed One, and dying means gaining more of him. [22-24] So here’s my dilemma: Each day I live means bearing more fruit in my ministry; yet I fervently long to be liberated from this body and joined fully to Christ. That would suit me fine, but the greatest advantage to you would be that I remain alive. So you can see why I’m torn between the two-I don’t know which I prefer.
Observation
I love that Paul would choose death over life, if it were not for the sake of others and bearing more gospel fruit. His only reason to live is the sharing of Jesus. Without this passion he fervently longs “to be liberated from this body and joined fully to Christ.” I hold on so tight to this life, and not for the reasons Paul expresses. I love the freedom that Paul has, I love the focus that Paul has, I love the way Paul knows his saviour. His tension is not passion for this life but the tension between sharing Jesus and being with Jesus. There is so much more of Jesus that I long to intimately discover, that I may have Paul’s wrestle.
Paul knows that the beauty of life is death. To die is to gain more of Christ, to be joined more fully to Christ, to be liberated from the fragility, the pain, the tears of this brokenness. Death is not an escape from here, here is a gift to be enjoyed and to be spent on bringing heaven to earth. But when here is swallowed up in death, I don’t enter the end, I enter a more fuller, more beautiful, an uninterrupted joining with God. I want to live here with a passion for there. That is real freedom. I want to live here not needing to be fulfilled but being able to be spent, being able to give myself for the sake of others, for the sake of the gospel. When I know that fulfilment comes in the next life, this life can be spent on others, on the gospel. A greater understanding of the beauty of death shapes the way I spend this short life.
Application
The more I remain in the beauty of the intimacy of the presence of God, the less I need what the world holds out for me. Knowing that my true life is in the anointed one, enables me to stop trying to find life in the lessor things, and embrace the truth of death, “dying means gaining more of him.” Not so I can rush towards death, but so I can live more fully alive.
Response
Thank you that this short existence is not the end. Thank you that knowing this shapes this time of life’s journey. More of you, this is life, this is the beauty of death. Thank you that you invite me to embrace the beauty of death that I may life the fullest of life. I love this life in you, I can now join Paul in his dilemma.
Meditation
Meditate – dying means gaining more of him.
Consider:
How tightly do I hang onto this life and how this keeps me from living this life in the fullness of the gospel and others.
Do I fear death, or live from its beauty?
JOURNEY DEEPER
