Going To Your Own Funeral

Carter Conlon preached a great message on this topic.

http://sermons.tsc.nyc/the-joy-of-preaching-your-own-funeral/

Brothers,

Thank you for sharing. Brother Leonard and Carter words are encouraging and edifying.

Ironically I need this!

15 minutes before I saw this I wrote an email to a friend about the inner turmoil I have inside. Very restless on this inside. From unsatisfactory conditions of church, of work, got a disconnect with family, and even entertainment genre. I also find a disconnect with the world around me in certain matters and I wondered if this was a mid life crisis or just a normal Christian thing to go through. Friend told me it was a normal christian issue as I war between the flesh and the Spirit.

Then I see this from Ravenhill and some of what is said in it is what is growing very restless in me.........even to the extent that I found a website called talkdeath dot com that has a shirt that says 'Ask me about your mortality'. I thought it a good slogan to open the door for the gospel but then my goth self began come out and Just think about death.

Even recently my next door neighbor was found dead in her home. 52 years old and so I have thought alot about death, my own health, how long I would have to live and those around me since I have seen alot of people around me pass away who are not even that old.

So what Ravenhill says here is kind of like jumper cables to me. Just gotta turn the key on and jumpstart my soul!

John

Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into His death? Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

Present yourself unto God, as alive from the dead. " The whole self consciousness of the Christian is to be imbued and characterised by the spirit that animated the death of Christ. He has ever to present himself to God as one who has died in Christ, and in Christ is alive from the dead, bearing about in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus. His life ever bears the two-fold mark: its roots striking in true humility deep into the grave of Jesus, the death to sin and self; its head lifted up in resurrection power to the heaven where Jesus is.

Believer, claim in faith the death and the life of Jesus as thine. Enter in His grave into the rest from self and its work - the rest of God. With Christ, who committed His spirit into the Father's hands, humble thyself and descend each day into that perfect, helpless dependence upon God. God will raise you up and exalt you. Sink every morning in deep, deep nothingness into the grave of Jesus; every day the life of Jesus will be manifest in you, Let a willing, loving, restful, happy humility be the mark that you have indeed claimed thy birthright - the baptism into the death of Christ. "By one offering He has perfected for ever them that are sanctified."The souls that enter into His humiliation will find in Him the power to see and count self dead, and, as those who have learned and received of Him, to walk with all lowliness and meekness, forbearing one another in love. The death-life is seen in a meekness and lowliness like that of Christ.

Andrew Murray

Edit to add this note

The key - Believer, claim in faith the death and the life of Jesus as thine.

This excacxtly what Ravenhill said but in a different way -

Tell him, ‘I want to be crucified with Christ. Put to death everything that is unholy. Fill me as full as a human can be with the Holy Spirit of God. I’m going to get rid of this bondage tonight.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified Heb 10:14

So wonderfully put! Thank you for sharing.

I would add that I never felt so dead to self than when I met our Lord and put him first in my life. I felt "new" and, yet, dead (to my former self) at the same time. The dead tries to resurrect itself; but, it is ineffective with the continuance of placing our King first.

In this sense, every moment spent in prayer, worship and study of the Word of God feels like I am drawing closer to the newness of life. If my spirit feels dry, I remember that moment that I met him and passed from death to new life.

Hi Greg

Thank you for sharing this.

Blessings,
Robert

Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course you do. Well, the same Scripture that says He died for us says also that we died with Him. Look at it again: "Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). That is the first statement, and that is clear enough; but is this any less clear? "Our old man was crucified with him" (Romans 6:6). "We died with Christ" (Romans 6:8).

When are we crucified with Him? What is the date of our old man's crucifixion? Is it tomorrow? Yesterday? Today? In order to answer this it may help us if for a moment I turn Paul's statement round and say, `Christ was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man'. Some of you came here in twos. You traveled to this place together. You might say, My friend came here with me', but you might just as truly say, `I came here with my friend'. Had one of you come three days ago and the other only today you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So also in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, `I was crucified when Christ was crucified' or `Christ was crucified when I was crucified', for they are not two historical events, but one. My crucifixion was "with him".[3] Has Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise? And if He was crucified nearly two thousand years ago, and I with Him, can my crucifixion be said to take place tomorrow? Can His be past and mine be present or future? Praise the Lord, when He died in my stead, but He bore me with Him to the Cross, so that when He died I died. And if I believe in the death of the Lord Jesus, then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I believe in His.

Why do you believe that the Lord Jesus died? What is your ground for that belief? Is it that you feel He has died? No, you have never felt it. You believe it because the Word of God tells you so. When the Lord was crucified, two thieves were crucified at the same time. You do not doubt that they were crucified with Him, either, because the Scripture says so quite plainly.

You believe in the death of the Lord Jesus and you believe in the death of the thieves with Him. Now what about your own death? Your crucifixion is more intimate than theirs. They were crucified at the same time as the Lord but on different crosses, whereas you were crucified on the self same cross as He, for you were in Him when He died. How can you know? You can know for the one sufficient reason that God has said so. It does not depend on your feelings. If you feel that Christ has died, He has died; and if you do not feel that he died, He has died. If you feel that you have died, you have died; and if you do not feel that you have died, you have nevertheless just as surely died. These are Divine facts. That Christ has died is a fact, that the two thieves have died is a fact, and that you have died is a fact also. Let me tell you, You have died! You are done with! You are ruled out! The self you loathe is on the Cross in Christ. And "he that is dead is freed from sin" (Romans 6:7, A.V.). This is the Gospel for Christians.

Our crucifixion can never be made effective by will or by effort, but only be accepting what the Lord Jesus did on the Cross. Our eyes must be opened to see the finished work of Calvary. Some of you, prior to your salvation, may have tried to save yourselves. You read the Bible, prayed, went to Church, gave alms. Then one day your eyes were opened and you saw that a full salvation had already been provided for you on the Cross. You just accepted that and thanked God, and peace and joy flowed into your heart. Now salvation and sanctification are on exactly the same basis. You receive deliverance from sin in the same way as you receive forgiveness of sins.

Nee

Amen brother, the challenging thing about the death of the old man or the death of the deeds of the body as Paul said
is it must be done through the spirit. Paul said if you by the Spirit do put to death the deeds of the body. On our journey we Tend to have some sin put to death through the spirits power to sanctify us and then the deep-rooted inner Sins and character flaws tend to be harder to put to death. The blood of Christ through the spirit seems to deal with cigarettes and alcohol and fornication and adultery and stealing things like that tend to get put away in some cases or just restrained under the power of the flesh, in other cases the spirit puts them to death but then we have sins like judgement, shyness, unbelief in certain teachings of the scripture, Pride and these other things can be a challenge. I found two major sins or blockages that stop a person from growing in sanctification and holyness through the dying of the old nature. One is judgement, false judgement a sin that is embedded in our flesh , the result of that is not being able to love our enemies and even love our brothers in Christ the way we are called to love. It seems to make it impossible to express the spirit of love through us, so I believe false judgement is the most important sin to deal with I think Jesus definitely taught about it and so did the apostles but we brush over that thinking that we are not judging anyone but in reality we could be judging millions or thousands of people and not loving quite a big proportion of the human race. And the other sin is the sin of unbelief, in which we doubt and do not believe that the blood of Christ has the ability to cleanse us from every sin and cause us to walk like Christ walked completely free from the dominion of sin. When we doubt that doctrine of the power of the blood to completely sanctify us we give faith and power to the old man to stay alive and so hold on to certain inclinations of The flesh. I think some of these hidden sins are so embedded in our character that we don't believe that it's possible to have a complete change and walk in the new creation as sons of the heavenly man the second Adam. We tend to hold on to and identify with the nature of adam in some small ways instead of fully identifying with the nature of Christ and realising that it's our inheritance to walk as Christ walked and to have Christ in us the hope of Glory the fully formed lamb within us..,.. blessings everyone

To reckon ourselves dead to sin we must allow the Holy spirit to convict us of sin, so that we by that same spirit put death the sins of the body. To identify with the crucifixion of Christ, and allow the death of Christ to be our own death, the death of the old man, we must understand that this still is another expression of repentance towards God and repentance of sin, we must have a conscience of what sin is to have it crucified and put to death.. so as we come to the altar which is the cross we must allow the sword of the spirit which is the word of God the high priests work of cutting and exposing every sin of the old nature so that we can reject it and be healed. The idea of dying with Christ doesn't replace or contradict the deep work of the Holy spirit to bring out and show all the sin that is within the old nature that has to die. We must take all our sin to the altar to the cross to be dealt with. This Becomes a deep spiritual experience of the heart it's not an exercise we do through the intellect. It also involves the suffering and hard trials and stripes that occurred before the death of the Cross, which is part of partaking of the sufferings of Christ and the refining and testing of our faith through fire, Jesus learnt obedience through the things that he suffered we must also walk through the valley of the shadow of death and experience suffering. He who suffers ceases from sin. This has a purifying effect and through that process god allows every crutch that we lean on in this world to be knocked out from under us so that we learn the hard way only to lean on and trust in Christ and what he did on the cross for us. Once we carried our cross and walked up to the hill of Calvary it has a pride stripping effect and we become ready to be placed upon the cross with Christ and not as a Barrabbas, as a murderer in heart. Our heart must be prepared before the sacrificial death. The apostle Paul said offer yourselves as a living sacrifice Holy and acceptable to God. Two types of people try to be crucified with Christ the Barrabas, or the humbled thief. Learning obedience through the things that we suffer on the whipping Post and the pathway up to golgotha, on the pathway of bearing the cross even before we die with Christ we must pray and say forgive them Lord for they know not what they do, peace to the world a good will towards men. We can't take false judgement to the sacrificial altar, we must allow the spirit to do a cleansing work to prepare us for that special death, for the deep work of the Cross.

Hi Brothers I just want to explain what I meant about barabbus, he like many Christians was meant to go to the cross and die but his connection with the world and the flesh so to speak and the world's call and those drawing upon his life caused him to never walk the path to Calvary nor to be crucified on the cross. Where as the thief humberly understood that he deserve to die for the sins that he committed and understood who Christ was, and because of this he was crucified with Christ and found himself in Paradise with his saviour. 🔥🙏🔥

Hi your comments about Barabbus reminded me on Derek Prince testimony about this very subject.

Derek Prince testimony

Now God made this vivid to me personally many years ago now. I was for about eight years the pastor of a small Pentecostal congregation in the center of London, England. And some people who know me today would find it hard to believe this, but we conducted open air services three times every week in the center of London at a place that’s known as Speaker’s Corner, Marble Arch. And that was where we got our fish. We went out and fished for sinners, brought them in. And we saw over the years hundreds of sinners saved through those meetings at Speaker’s Corner.

But one night during this period I had a very vivid dream. And in my dream I saw a typical open air meeting. A circle of people standing around and a man in the middle preaching. And as I watched the man and listened to him I said to myself, "What he’s preaching is pretty good.” But there was something I didn’t like about the man. It was like he was hunchbacked and he had a club foot and altogether he looked crooked. So I woke up and I thought, "I wonder what that meant,” and dismissed it. But about two weeks later I had the same dream again. So this time I said to myself, "God must be trying to tell me something. I wonder who the man is?” And it was like the Holy Spirit said to me what Nathan said to David, "thou art the man.”

And it opened up to me a completely new aspect of salvation. I was soundly saved by most standards, baptized in the Spirit, serving the Lord, but there was something in me that was crooked and unacceptable to God. It was the old man. I didn’t have any gospel understanding of God’s program for the old man. I had to find my way through these things
Well, about the same time Easter was coming on and because of the Easter season somehow I had in my mind a mental image of the hill of Golgotha [or Calvary] and the three crosses on it. But the middle cross was much taller than the other two. And it was like the Holy Spirit put me through an examination. He said, "Now tell me, for whom was the middle cross made?” But it was as if he said, "Be careful before you answer.” So I stopped and thought and I said, "It was made for Barabbas.” And he said, "That’s right.” Because it really was not made for Jesus. Do you understand? Barabbas was due to be executed. But he was released at the last moment, Jesus took his place. So then he said, "But Jesus took the place of Barabbas.” I said, "That’s right.” Then the Holy Spirit said, "But I thought Jesus took your place?” I said, "Yes, that’s right.” Then he said, "You must be Barabbas.”

And at that point I saw it. I never try to argue with people about that, it’s a revelation. But I saw that I was the criminal for whom the cross was made. It was exactly to my measure. It was appropriate for me. But Jesus took my place.

That made it so vivid to me, God’s program for dealing with the old man. This is quite distinct from the forgiveness of sin. The forgiveness of sins is wonderful but you’re never going to have a life of victory or real fruitfulness as long as that old rebel is still alive inside you. God’s provision is the execution of the rebel. God’s mercy is the execution took place when Jesus died. Our old man was crucified with him. The Old King James says "is crucified” which is the perfect tense. But the more correct translation is "was crucified.” It’s a simple past tense, it’s an actual, historical fact that took place.

Derek Prince teaching - Our Old Man was put to Death in Him that the New Man might come to Life in us.

from: shorturl.at/fBT78

Amen Colin 🙏 it always amazes me how many applications the Holy spirit can use regarding certain parts of the scripture. There seems to be one true literal interpretation but many spiritual interpretations in applications that the Holy spirit uses to Hammer home some truth that is always meant to spurs us on to righteousness, and help us have a closer relationship with him. 😊🙏🔥🕊️

Nee quote:

You receive deliverance from sin in the same way as you receive forgiveness of sins.

Nee believed that there was two distinct works of salvation, clearly Derek Prince believed there was two distinct works

Derek Prince quote:

That made it so vivid to me, God’s program for dealing with the old man. This is quite distinct from the forgiveness of sin. The forgiveness of sins is wonderful but you’re never going to have a life of victory or real fruitfulness as long as that old rebel is still alive inside you.

This is what God has been speaking to me about over the years, two distinct works of Spirit of God. The only person I see preaching or teaching this message today is Zac Poonen you can read it in his teachings that Greg Gordon puts up.

Just by reading the posts here you can see that many desire a life of victory, to be free from the Wretched man.

Before I got saved I had a nickname it was Coco - I asked people to stop calling me that as he no longer lived.

But Colin is a wretched man, he rebels against God, he is crooked - I know that Colin must die so that Christ may live.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh. Romans 8:3

God has done it - through his Son - he condemned sin in the flesh or in other he put to death sin in the flesh.

Sin in the flesh?

Rom 7:17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

God has done it - through his Son - he has put to death sin that dwells within me.

Yeah for sure , I've believed that now for a while, there's probably a few ways to appropriate it, and a few ways to express more or less similar result. We are saved by Grace through faith and it's not of ourselves it's the gift of God not of works and we're also sanctified and made holy by grace through faith and it's not of ourselves it's the gift of God is normally how I put it in the simplistic form that one can attain deliverance simply through believing that sanctification holiness and deliverance from addiction or evil spirits that may hamper Christian through his journey from being a carnal babe too a mature saint. Holding onto the verse that Jesus said 'he who commits is a slave of sin but when the son sets you free you will be free indeed. That was the verse that after many years I held onto and believed and after coming to the end of myself through hard trials, and the absolute knowledge that I am doomed and I cannot sanctify myself through works all I was doing was amending The flesh, in the same way unbelievers try to create good habits in their flesh and overcome another habit by creating a so-called better habit, John Wesley and the Methodist and holiness preachers sort of believe something similar the second work of the spirit sanctifies in a similar way and have faith in the spirit to do that sanctifying work. I know it works different with different people but for me I was born again delivered from some things and 5 years later I was baptised in the spirit delivered by a few more things and empowered and then the third blessing that came through holding onto that verse for many years that third blessing felt like it was close to what I would have called in entire sanctification and I never believed in the doctrine of entire sanctification either, but that's how I would describe it everything just broke off and even the spirit of shyness spirit that was embedded in me from very small boy that left me as well, but what I found is the Holy spirit still continues to bring out sin after that to your conscience to be cleansed further through the same method but I found now that the holy spirit has emphasised through revelation the power of the blood in the power of communion to go further into holiness, having said that after that third blessing that I would describe as entire sanctification I walked in type of victory for 3 months and then trials of spiritual warfare came and inevitably that victory that I had turned into battles and so it drove me to deep prayer, spiritual warfare and many many hours of meditating on the word of God, so I don't think the actual war ends till either Jesus comes back or until there could be a place that which is called the spiritual circumcision the circumcision of the heart a cutting off of the the power of the flesh , we reach that place of perfect love the casts out of fear I believe there will be a period of victory probably that will last more than 3 months as Jesus had victory over the devil after his 40 Day fast the devil left him for a season and I believe that we can also follow and expect full victory and a truce A cease fire in the battle against the devil, whatever happens the main thing is to never ever stop believing that the blood and the sacrifice of the lamb has the full power to forgive us from every sin and to break the power of every sin and cleanse us perfectly the sacrifice was perfectly sufficient and we must believe that all things are possible and that when we grow to that perfect man to the measure of the statue of the fullness of Christ and we reach a place of perfect love that we can fulfil those commandments of being a holy as our father is Holy and being perfect as he is perfect and those that say they abide Christ ought to walk just as he walked. There must be a type of victory over sin that is a complete victory where we have a completely clear conscience of sin, it's says that in the scripture and I believe that that's what the apostles taught and that's what Jesus taught but we got a believe for that. It doesn't matter how we feel and it doesn't matter how many times we failed in the past we must believe in victory for the blood sake and for what Jesus did on the cross that he will get the reward of his suffering period.