Self Death

"There is hardly anything in which we have such a need to die to self as in seeing and suffering things that are contrary to our wishes, especially when we are ordered to do what appears inconvenient and useless." - Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

I have been slowly reading my way through The Diary of David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians (1718-1747). He was a contemporary of Jonathan Edwards. The diaries were edited by Edwards after Brainerd's death (likely from tuberculosis) at age 29. He dated his conversion to an event at the age of 21, so he had only 8 years of service (and life).

To read his diary is slow going, both for the denseness of the text as well as trying to actually absorb it. What emerges (at least what emerges so far) is a man who was passionately in love with God, hyper-aware of his own sinful nature, and often very depressed. Yet in spite of his sinfulness and depression and the conditions under which he labored (literally in the forest in 18th century colonial America), he stayed faithfully at his post until he literally could no longer serve.

I juxtapose this with the above quote from Thomas A Kempis because it seems to represent the other side of the same coin. I have often talked and thought about the concept of dying to self but don't know how to do it; here, A Kempis shows one of God's primary methods of doing it. By seeing and suffering things contrary to our wishes, by doing this which appear inconvenient and useless as commanded by others, A Kempis suggests that we are building up our ability to die to what we want in a practical fashion.

It's not that it sounds pleasant, nor is it from my experience. But that does give a different slant on things that occur in my day: maybe the purpose of at least some of them is not so much that I accomplish anything because of them but that I embed in my character how to die to self - so that in some greater circumstance (the extreme being Brainerd), such things will not seem so onerous or undoable but merely an extension of what I have already done.