Praying to die

I’m tired of living. I really want to die. I pray to die. I did so again this morning, actually.

Why? Because I am the most blessed woman in the world. There is not a need God doesn’t meet for me. At the age of 68, my Father directed me to move to a town I had only visited once before.

I have met some of the most amazing people in this city. They are easy to love and many of them care about and for me. My pastors and leaders are people who know God and love God and desire to see His power demonstrated. And that makes me want to die even more.

I have a “job” that I asked God for a decade ago. The job didn’t exist when I asked. It does now, and I get good reviews from my supervisor, and the Holy Spirit goes before me and I see God at work in the words He speaks through me. That makes me more determined that I have to, I simply must die.

Why? Because there is more to me than I’m living. And to get to the more, I have to die.

I have spent most of my waking time the last 48 hours praying to be so dead to myself that all I can see is the expression on the Lord’s face. If I can picture the face of the Lord as children die from a disease He bore in His crucifixion, perhaps I will not leave the courts of God until that child is healed.

If I can see Him laugh when an addict is set free and learns about how much God has for Him, then maybe it will be impossible for me to think it’s okay to let them struggle with something they never intended to experience.

If I can see the Lord’s expression when people who have been born again for decades say, “I wonder if God even cares about me”, then maybe I will put a hand on their shoulder and pull them into me and cry with them until they have absorbed His love.

I cannot go another day without dying to myself. Because everything that breaks the Lord’s heart is something that He defeated when He died to Himself. His “nevertheless” is the remedy for any disease. For addiction. For a lack of knowledge that God loves.

As long as part of me continues to live and rule my soul and my mind, the distractions can keep me from giving out what He has put in me.

As long as I live to myself, I will live with a form of godliness in me, but the Christ in me will be denied the ability to work through me. His power will lay dormant within me. Cancer will win. Families will lose hope. Jesus will return and some will be surprised to find there was a life for them that they never knew existed.

He who has died has been cleared from sin. From the lack of concern for others. From the busyness that distracts. May the words be true, “Now it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”