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Death

by Barri Cae Mallin

Shalom. My name is Barri Cae. I was raised in a Jewish home and was saved in 1980
in my cousin's Jewish delicatessen. To God be all the glory. Shalom.

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No one likes the thought of death. Although we think we can handle the subject, we cannot without the help of the LORD. My ‘spiritual mom’ who was 85 years old, just passed away a few weeks ago. Cancer came upon her suddenly; we knew it was her time for promotion but getting through the dying tested her beyond words could express. In one of the final conversations that we had, I asked her how God revealed Himself to her (she could not even hold a Bible at this point). She said that a lone bird came into the courtyard every day; she knew that the LORD had sent that little birdie to assure her of His love.

The hardest thing in our walk with the LORD is to die. Die to the plans that you thought were yours about ‘happily ever after’. Some have been called to die to their ideas that marriage would last forever, or that the job or career would last forever, or that child would outlive them or that there were enough funds in the retirement account to retire early, only to see that quickly disappear.

God allows these times of dying to show us that we do not own ourselves. None of us like to be humbled. It is uncomfortable. It is painful. Yeshua tells us Learn of Me for I am weak and lowly of heart (Matthew 11:29) but somehow I just don’t want to personally experience that for myself because it hurts, it is painful and I want to avoid pain at any cost.

God wants us to see our nothingness before Him. Truly, we are nothing before Him. But this should not surprise us because Yeshua was nothing without the Father. He told us so in many passages.

John answered and said, A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven (John 3:27).

Therefore Yeshua answered and was saying to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner (John 5:19).

I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me (John 5:30).

So Yeshua said, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me (John 8:28).

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing (John 15:5).

We know these verses, but we don’t really know these verses. Yeshua lived the ‘nothing’ life, the empty life. All He was was all the Father is. His greatest experience of becoming nothing was His death at the Cross. It took perfect faith for Yeshua to submit His everything to the Father. We are to do the same. We need perfect faith, His faith, the faith of Yeshua to submit, to die to self. We cannot cause ourselves to die, this is God’s work. We are called to totally submit our will to the Father. God calls for nothing less that death for each and every one of us if we are to truly follow in the steps of Yeshua.

Perfect emptiness. Perfect humility. The only way up is down. The only way to live is to die.

There is a beauty, though, in dying to self. We get an experiential knowing of the LORD that we never would have otherwise. There is a beauty to being conformed to the image of Yeshua. There is closeness to God like never before. Death proves that we follow Yeshua, Yeshua, the Lamb of God.

Lambs are not even adult sheep; lambs are young sheep. Sheep know nothing and lambs even know less than sheep. Yeshua is the perfect example of the Perfect Lamb. He was perfect meekness. We are to be the same.

Rest in God. Let Him have His perfect work in you. He is doing a much more beautiful work than any other worldly thing could ever do; He is making you to be more like Yeshua.
 

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More devotionals by Barri Cae may be found at www.barricae.com
You may also receive them by email. Inquire at barricae@comcast.net.

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