A Good Day to Die by Loni McIntosh

Scottish Highland warriors throughout history were commonly viewed as being at least a little bit crazy. They would enter battle outnumbered and overpowered and would fight like wildcats for their homeland, their families and their lives. And, knowing how highly every man's life was worth against a larger army, they would throw themselves into battle shouting into the faces of the enemy, "It's a good day to die!"

As Christians, we know that Christ came that we may have "life, and life more abundantly. (John 10:10)" In John 7:38-39, Jesus said, "'Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.' By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified." All of which makes sense, since the Holy Spirit's purpose is to lead us into and reveal Jesus to us, he was not given to believers until he could lead us to and transform us into the likeness of Jesus resurrected and glorified.

Several months ago, one of the young guys on our student leadership team (theCORE) had a dream. We were in a meeting talking about what God was saying to us as a group and several young people were sharing dreams God had given them recently. A young guy named Aaron spoke up and said, "I have a dream for you.” In his mind, this dream was so crazy that there was no way it could be from God.

In the dream a bird flew out of the sky and landed on the branch of a tree. It sat there for a minute, then it died and fell out of the tree. When it landed on the ground, it burst into flame and lit on fire the wheat field it landed in and the tree it fallen from. Then the bird multiplied, becoming three birds, which rose, living, from the flames. The birds flew off lighting other trees and other fields on fire.

In John 12:23-25 Jesus says, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life."

Jesus has called us to live as he is now – glorified. Life and life more abundantly. Greater works than these shall you do. The state that Jesus lives in now, which the Holy Spirit leads us and transforms us into, is "glorified." Jesus is alive and he is glorified, but he is alive as a direct result of having been resurrected. A key part of Jesus' "glorified" state is the fact that he has died. He is not dead, but he certainly has died. It is impossible for us to live lives of complete Christianity in fully abundant life if we have not died. We definitely should not be dead, but we should be living as those who have died.

Aaron’s dream was a parallel of Jesus' John 12 analogy. We talk about spreading "the fire of God" around the globe, and we talk about seeing a massively abundant harvest come into the Kingdom of God. Up until this point in time, the harvest has been by addition. A person gets saved; he goes to heaven; God loves him a whole bunch. But if we are to see a massive harvest sweep the earth in a way that fulfills the Great Commission, our "sowing" must be multiplying, rather than adding, into the Kingdom. By looking at John 12 and Aaron's dream, it is simple to reason that in order to see that happen, in order to multiply the harvest and see the fire of God cover the earth, we must die. But the truth is, we're called to be like Christ, and Christ isn't dead. It is not, then, that we must die – we must have died.

Dying is, of course, a very big part of having died. Dying in life, as John 12 says, involves serving and giving up our own plans and ideas about what life ought to look like and, instead, "being transformed by the renewing of your mind.... (Romans 12:2)" It involves trusting God's opinion about who we are and what we can do more than we trust our own thoughts. It involves sacrificing our time, our resources, our dreams and desires in order to see God's Kingdom multiplied.

To serve Jesus. To love. Love is a directionless beast. Dying involves relinquishing the right to pick and choose who we love. Our love must be for any and all who appear on our path, regardless of what we are doing or where we are going.

So we are called not just to live, but to have died. We live abundantly, full of the goodness and fullness of Christ glorified, having relinquished all rights to living life to benefit ourselves. It is this that makes us a little bit crazy in the eyes of the world. But it is this that confounds the enemy and will multiply the harvest and spread the fire of God around the world.

For me there is no question: It's a good day to die!