Conflict - anger - my way - less self - joy

STANDING FOR THE RIGHT WITHOUT EGOTISM - One source of difficulty in dying to self is that we may confuse our desire for what is good and right with our desire to have our own way. In many controversies, important values are at stake and people are passionately committed to each side. That is as it should be. 

But more often than not, the contempt and anger that emerges in the conflict manifests the will to have our way. Families, churches, communities, and sovereign nations become embroiled in deadly conflicts that would disappear or be resolved but for the relentless will to have our way. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,” Jesus said, “it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life [soul] loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal” (John 12:24-25). 

Does dying to self mean we will be without feeling? Far from it. Apprentices of Jesus become disturbed about many things and passionately desire many things, but not getting their way does not disturb them. To accept with confidence in God that we do not have to get our own way releases us from the great pressure that anger, unforgiveness, and the “need” to retaliate impose upon our lives. This by itself is a huge transformation of the landscape of our lives. It removes the root and source of the greater part of human evil in our world. Jesus commanded “not to resist him who is evil; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also” (Matthew 5:39, PAR). Such remarkable teaching presupposes that we have laid down the burden of having our own way. We can’t begin to even understand it, except from my posture of self denial based on the confidence and experience of God’s all-sufficient presence in our lives. But to step with Jesus into the path of self- denial immediately breaks the ironclad grip of sin over a human personality and opens the way to a fuller restoration of radical goodness to the soul. It accesses the supernatural strength for life (see Psalm 84:7).

 Dallas Willard

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