Someone had recently posted a link to the article called, 'Calvary Road' by Roy Hession. I had meant to post my comment on that thread, but couldn't seem to locate it again, after finding it earlier.
I've just started reading it, and it's been a real blessing!
I found the section below especially good. I remember while a teenager, the time when my mom first started talking to me about this idea of 'dying to oneself'. When my mom first shared about this concept, I recoiled at the thought. It seemed like if you were to die to yourself, then what would you become.... a 'nothing', having no feelings, a robot of some sort which lacked any identity? But as Hession points out, the death to self actually makes one happier, as this death is necessary in order for true life- life in Christ to take shape.
In Jesus,
John
"People imagine that dying to self makes one miserable. But it just the opposite. It is the refusal to die to self that makes one miserable. The more we know of death with Him, the more we shall know of His life in us, and so the more of real peace and joy. His life, too, will overflow through us to lost souls in a real concern for their salvation, and to our fellow Christians in a deep desire for their blessing.
Only one thing prevents Jesus filling our cups as He passes by, and that is sin in one of its thousand forms. The Lord Jesus does not fill dirty cups. Anything that springs from self, however small it may be, is sin. Self-energy or self-complacency in service is sin. Self-pity in trials or difficulties, self-seeking in business or Christian work, self-indulgence in one's spare time, sensitiveness, touchiness, resentment and self-defence when we are hurt or injured by others, self-consciousness, reserve, worry, fear, all spring from self and all are sin and make our cups unclean.* But all of them were put into that other cup, which the Lord Jesus shrank from momentarily in Gethsemane, but which He drank to the dregs at Calvary - the cup of our sin. And if we will allow Him to show us what is in our cups and then give it to Him, He will cleanse them in the precious Blood that still flows for sin. That does not mean mere cleansing from the guilt of sin, nor even from the stain of sin - though thank God both of these are true - but from the sin itself, whatever it may be. And as He cleanses our cups, so He fills them to overflowing with His Holy Spirit."
