Celebrating and Practicing Death as A Process for Growth and Fruitfulness

UV 3363/10000 Celebrating and Practicing Death as A Process for Growth and Fruitfulness
I assure you and most solemnly say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone ( just one grain and no more). But if it dies, it produces much grain and yields a harvest.

John 12 v 24

Death is universally feared and abhorred. Jesus is the first and only one to expound the principle that death is both necessary and useful for growth, fruitfulness and multiplication. It is also a prophetic utterance as the death of Jesus willingly on the cross prepared and enabled our lives to be fruitful and blessed. Dying is not something we involuntarily experience once at the end of our earthly lives but it is a process we need to practice willingly, wilfully and consciously every day and every moment of our lives. It should be concomitant with our lives. This uni-verse contains an eternal principle that we can apply effectively in different areas of our lives. We need to die to lust and pride. We need to die to indiscreet speech. We need to die to anger and bitterness. We need to die to selfish ambition. We need to die to envy. When we so die or utterly end these negativities of our lives, we live the abundant life in Christ. We will produce a rich harvest of the spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and humility in our inner nature.

Our dying to our egos, will enable us to love the Lord as well as our neighbor wholeheartedly. Our dying to our biases and prejudices will help us relate to all people without prejudging them. Dying involves a process of “ falling” to the ground like a grain of wheat. The grain then gets covered with the soil. It slowly but completely dies even as it turns around to allow the tiny root to push out of its outer covering and grow downwards. Likewise, our souls should die to itself, our desires, our fears, our emotions and turn around to send forth its roots into the fertile soil of the Word. Once the tiny root is watered and nourished it springs forth with its shoot and eventually produces much fruit or grain.

The dead grain produces a living root. The living root in union with the soil and other conditions grows to produce grain- a hundred fold or more. Likewise, the new root in our nature nurtured by the Holy Spirit and growing in the soil of the Word grows, flourishes and multiplies. We can imitate this process in the different aspects of our personal and corporate lives to produce abundance.