Shhhhh…It’s a Mercy Killing

Allow me to date myself by quoting a line from a song by the Imperials (a popular CCM group before the dawn of time):

“Now in my house there’s been a mercy killing,

the man I used to be’s been crucified,

and the death of this man is a final way of revealing,

in a spiritual way TO LIVE YOU HAVE TO DIE.”

How very, very far I was from understanding those words, as I sang at the top of my lungs to the cassette player in my lime-green Datsun 30 years ago. Be assured that God is at work today, in the midst of the most painful thing you are enduring, to bring about a mercy killing. The reign of self has to end for King Jesus to hold the throne of our hearts.

As we grow in Christ there are countless ongoing adjustments, but for our deepest, darkest patterns of sin to disappear there must be a funeral. The more we fight the execution, the worse the pain. Surrender today to the death that must occur, and soon you will see God’s immense mercy in putting to death something specific that had only made you restless and miserable. You may think the language of death and funeral and dying to self to be overly dramatic . . . You won’t after it’s happened to you. Praise God for His goodness in every mercy killing.

John 12:23-24 “And Jesus answered them . . . Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

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