Kissing The Morning With Frost Comments

Last night was kind of hard for me. My heart was hurt and it was difficult to see the lesson in it. This morning I awoke and looked out my window while holding my cup of coffee. I gazed out of the glass for a time and my eyes began to rest on my wife’s tomato plant. It was totally encased in a beautiful sheen of frost. Each vine and fruit was completely surrounded in a chilling prison of ice; signalling the death of growth and the start of a new season. I began to lament the loss of fruit and the succulent heirlooms that the little garden had produced all summer, but the lord began to awaken my spirit to a different thought. Yes, the death of a process, a ministry, a season can be painfully awkward and a time of nervous anticipation of what might come next, but, there has to be a “death” for a new work to begin. You see, to be like Christ, something which we all should try to be, we need to put to death the old ways and live according to His Spirit; which is at work in all believers. Romans 8: 13 says: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

So, what does Mr.Great Plains Poet do? I am to put to death all things that I hold dear, the things I have carved out for myself, and we all have those, the things that I have kept hidden and the things that are not of God. I truly want to live; to live according to His purposes and attain a more excellent way to walk with Him.
We get so wrapped up in death. We focus a lot of energy and time in preventing it, avoiding it and running from the sorrow and lesson of death. I won’t get into the pain of our own deaths and our loved one’s physical deaths here. That is for another post. But, I am talking about the state of our hearts now. We are so afraid to lay bare our hearts to the Lord; for examination, for perfection and for healing. We will never be able to move into a more mature relationship in the Lord if we fear death and hold tightly to a dream, sin or a striving that God didn’t put there in the first place.
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