Dying to Self

Donald Miller's chapter on Community in Blue Like Jazz struck me as something I really need, but the quote of impact came at the end of the chapter when he wrote (quoting a bed and breakfast owner he was talking to):

If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus.

Holy crap! That really hit home. I'm so all about me and I'm so frustrated with others being all about them it's driving me crazy. As i read and re-read this comment, i thought of Jesus's call to us in Mark 8:34:

Then He had called to the crowd and summoned them to Him-including His disciples, He spoke to them giving them this call and challenge:
If any one of you determines to, choosing by preference because you love Me, to come and follow after Me and accompany Me, you must utterly deny and disown yourself [NLT: put aside your selfish ambition], lift up and carry your own cross [that instrument of the cruelest death and symbol of being exposed to death and self-denial] and be in the same way that I am (accompany Me as My disciple).

what if i REALLY did this? What if i woke up this morning and immediately died to Christ. What if I died to myself regarding Angie and the kids? What if I died to myself regarding my job at the school? What if i died to myself with my interns and made it about them and God's work in their lives? What if i just got over myself.

Then, Galatians 2:20--the concept of being impaled with Christ:

I have been impaled with Christ….
Both…

• I have entered into death with Christ-being conformed, jointly formed with Him in His death. Therefore, we are buried with Him through baptism into death. In baptism we are baptized into His death (AND if we have been united with Him like this in death, we will certainly also be untied with Him in His resurrection"…that I might attain the resurrection of dead") For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin (my sin nature to which this body was a slave) might be destroyed so that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
  
• Christ has pierced me through. He has cut me clear through to the quick of my being. He has touched me to the center, to the core of my being.

…and yet I live! Hereafter it is no longer I who is living, but Christ, the Anointed Messiah, who lives, is quickened (His life has been stimulated within me). This life that I live in this present and immediate time in my fleshly body, I live based on my being persuaded to believe in, my credence-the trustworthiness the inspiration and power I have in; my moral conviction of; and my reliance upon the Son of God Who had such moral, sacrificial and benevolent love for me that He surrendered Himself; betrayed Himself and delivered Himself up to hazard for me.

Oh, to not just understand this, but to live it!!!