Philippians 3:11 "and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead."

In Christ's death I see humiliation as he counted himself nothing putting himself a victim before man. Stripped of dignity. In humility not retaliating or using his power for his advantage, a plea with the Father to change his plan but a quiet submissiveness as he carried his cross up the hill to where he would be put to death. I see intense physical pain, I see him, hung up on his cross, exposed for all to see and mock. And then finally, when all this suffering had climaxed, his death. His followers looked on at what they thought was the end. There was Jesus, hung on a cross, dead and never to live again on this earth.

For three days it seemed like all was lost as he lay there lifeless in the tomb. But on the third, there was life, power, death was defeated and conquered. The war was won, the devil overcome. The death that had bewildered the disciples, leaving them discouraged was not in vain. All of the agony he had suffered and the death he suffered was worth the victory that he won in living.

The death and resurrection of Christ is a promise to me. That in dying to the flesh, I will somehow be given a live a life far greater. The death will not doubt be painful. It will require suffering and humiliaiton. It will strip of of the dignity I try to save. I will cry out to God asking him if there must not be another way, but it will require me, in submission, to pick up my cross and carry up the hill to where my flesh will be crucified, exposed in all of its ugliness for all to see. In the moment it may seem that when death comes all is lost, because this flesh, it is all I have ever known. But there is the promise of life. This death will not be in vain. And we can be assured, as the disciples were not, that the death not the miserable end, no it is only the passageway into a far greater life.

"Now if we died with Christ, we beleive that we will also live with him." (Romans 6:8) Psalm 126:5-6 encourages, "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy carrying sheaves with him."

I want to grasp more the promise of the life that death brings. Jesus asks me to give something up, and I hesitate, 'no I'll keep it I think.' And then he makes me miserable in that sin. He shows me how it is a lie, he exposes the prison that it is confining me in, until I finally hate it is well and want to be rid of it because I see the life that is far better outside of those bars. My flesh is like the ring that Gollum would not give up. It destroyed him and made him a miserable, selfish, ugly, pitiful, and wretched creature. The ring consumed his thoughts, it became his identity. Gollums bondage to the ring controlled his life and drove him to his downfall. Such is sin. And we have the power to be rid it and the promise of a far greater blessing.

In application I want to take to meditate and write about how personally I have gained life through death and exort myself to continue forward to remind me that it is worth it.