Title: The Christian Life is One of Death to Self
Meta: The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die. Things have become necessary to us, a development never originally intended. God's gifts now take the place of God, and the whole course of nature is upset by the monstrous substitution. - A. W. Tozer
Tags: Luke 17:33,A.W. Tozer,death,die,self,cross,Christ

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Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it.

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Whoever loses his life will keep it.

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Brethren, it's a place of death.

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That's why it's hard.

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Because when you surrender to Christ,

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Christ is militant about turning you into His likeness.

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And there is so much in you that must die.

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It is a place of death, and it's a place that's hard,

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and it's place that's going to confront us.(P)

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Listen to Tozer again,

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"There is within the human heart, a tough fibrous root of fallen life

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whose nature is to possess, always to possess.

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It covets things with a deep and fierce passion.

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The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print,

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but their constant and universal use is significant.

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They express the real nature of the old Adamic man

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better than a thousand volumes of theology could do.

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They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease.

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The roots of our hearts have grown down into things,

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and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die.(P)

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Brethren you see, the thing is that when God saves us,

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He means for all of us to be on the altar. All of us.

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I don't say all of us, numerically speaking.

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All of you.

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All.

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All your plans, and all your desires, and all your life.

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God will not allow His reign to be challenged.

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And brethren, you and I know it, our wills are strong.

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And our desire to do what we want to do, brethren, is strong. 

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Christianity is not about simply getting our theology right.

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We can get that idea, you know, "I got to believe right;

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I got all my doctrine down."

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Brethren, what Jesus tells us over and over again is: "If you're going to follow Me,

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I am going to take you on a death path.

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There is a cross to carry.

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And you know, we can look at it and say, "Well, not really. Not really.

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We don't literally have to carry a cross out there to Golgotha, and actually be crucified."

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But I would just ask you this: Would our Lord use the imagery

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if what He really meant is the Christian life is easy?

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Or would He probably use that if really the Christian life was going to be that hard.