Be Careful Or Else You Won’t Ever Go

I assure you, believers, by the pride which I have in you in [your union with] Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily [I face death and die to self]

1 Corinthians 15:31 (AMP)

When you think of John 15, do you tend to think of garden poems and symbiotic oneness with Christ, or…being despised by the world because of your faithful, Spirit-led witness of Him?

A weakly witnessing disciple

It’s an important question to ask because, if you’re anything like me, your flesh isn’t that keen on taking an otherworldly message of jolting repentance to a people replete and who quite simply do not want to know.

Ignorance is bliss: Porsches are parked pristinely on the drive; home offices are comfortably endowed; refrigerators are thoroughly filled and refilled and garages are more often than not converted into impressive, body-sculpting gymnasiums.

From the effortless arm’s length comfort of home, everything that could possibly be desired is often perfectly arranged to keep body and mind blissfully oblivious, together, pampered and prepared for a lifetime’s trudge towards an eternity without the Lamb of God.

A weakly witnessing disciple

Die The Death

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 6:5 (ESV)

Without the daily, ‘…counting ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus…’ (Romans 6), we will never witness as we should because we are still fundamentally loafing in the old life of unregenerate irresponsibility.

We don’t die and we don’t witness because we basically don’t care.

But if we are to be faithful as Jesus’ disciples, (faithful in individually dying the death daily; faithful as a local congregation of God’s people in gospel-heralding power), we must surely witness in some way every single day!

This is the most basic reason that we are alive. (We exist for the Father – see 1 Corinthians 8:6).

But in the face of such commonplace spiritual atrophy, and amidst the constantly creeping twilight of secularisation, unless you’re very, very careful indeed, you won’t witness at all.

The miracle of dying to self daily is the personal appropriation of the message we are commanded to take to other people: one with Christ, buried with Him in His agonising death but, also, raised with Him in His incomparable glory!

A weakly witnessing disciple

I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains [just one grain; it never becomes more but lives] by itself alone. But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest.

John 12:24 (AMPC)

Let’s Keep This Simple

It will rarely be easy, often seem weak and pointless, sometimes even aggressively attacked, but witnessing to the death and resurrection of Jesus remains the one thing you are told to get on with and your overarching earthly responsibility…that is if you are to prove to actually belong to Him. (See John 15:8).

If you don’t have a gospel publication that you’re confident will ‘cut it’ in today’s anti-Christ mayhem, either: 1) Write one yourself, produce it excellently as the pearl of great price that it is, or 2) Order some of ours here.

We are learning that, even with the best will in the world, the gnarly flesh will continually drag us back into passivity.

This is why Paul died every single day.

This dying daily can be a simple decision to remember John 15 primarily for vv26-27:

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning.”

John 15:26-27 (ESV)

You have a personal and infinitely powerful Helper/Advocate to lead you into the realm of daily witness (that your flesh simply hates) but an activity nonetheless that proclaims to the entire watching cosmos that you are your Beloved’s and that He is also assuredly yours, (Song of Solomon 6:3).

A weakly witnessing disciple

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