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 DYING TO SELF---RECEVING NEW LIFE

Dying to self, surrendering the whole of our old self to the Lord and God who created us, He removes our heart of stone and gives us a tender heart. With the new heart, He gives us a new spirit so that we begin to live a new life that only God can give us through Christ Jesus. It is a new way of living, a new way of being, one that we are innately accustomed to. Old things once relied on for identity or a sense of worth fall away, sometimes with great effort and pain. But God gives us the wherewithal to cooperate with Him as our lives are transformed. An old life is discarded, and a new life is entered into. That new Life is actually the Life of God being lived within us. It is by this that we become fully human, fully alive with Resurrection Life, the very Life of Jesus Christ live in us by the Holy Spirit.
In order to really live, we must surrender the parody of humanity we have thought was real life, and to believe God, believe what He has done, believing in the One Who lived, died and rose again to deliver us from a way of life whose end was unending death. The New Life is one that is eternal that no one can take from us, that never gets smaller but only greater and fuller. In nature, even via the life cycle of the eagle, God sheds light of the necessity of turning from the old in order to enter into the Life God created us to know. Repentance is turning from death, turning to Life as God has prepared for all who will believe Him.

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