Daily Dying

"It is in the daily circumstances of our lives that we are put to death. We cannot choose the way in which we are to be crucified, we can only accept the means of dying to self which each day brings us, at the hands of those with whom we live and work, and through all that is utterly uncongenial and repugnant to our own self-love; the things we don't like and want to evade, the frustrations and disappointments and heartbreaks, as well as the wrongdoings of others the results of which fall upon us. This dying is a process."


"'Many dyings and many deaths,' until, as William Law says, 'The spirit of love really becomes alive in us' and possesses us fully. But--and this is the glorious part--all the time that we are dying to self we may know heaven at the same time. At first, certainly, the dying is terribly painful and we struggle and resist, but sooner or later (depending upon how fully and quickly we yield ourselves and our will in all the daily circumstances of life) there comes a crisis when the real resurrection begins."


"It is a strange paradox--resurrection, but still a daily dying! For the dying really is this process of having our thought life transformed. We die to all unloving thoughts and allow the Holy Spirit of love to substitute his thoughts. Therefore, the continual dying is, as it were, the real root of our life in the heavenly places. It is through the door of death that we pass out from the prison of self and can swoop up into the glorious joy and liberty of the heavenly places." 


Hannah Hurnard, Winged Life