What Does It Mean to Die to Yourself?
I’ve been thinking about what it means to die to yourself.
When Jesus calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him, it can sound intimidating.
C.S. Lewis famously described self-denial, of this nature, as a kind of death to self.
At first, that can sound like God is asking us to become less ourselves.
But the more I’ve reflected on my own life lately, the more I’m beginning to see that dying to yourself isn’t about losing who you are.
It’s about surrendering who sits on the throne.
For so much of my life, I’ve been consumed with wanting things to go my own way. It took me a long time to realize that my greatest obstacle wasn’t my circumstances—it was me.
I wanted my plans to work.
I wanted people to think well of me.
I wanted to be in control.
I wanted life to make sense according to my own understanding.
The problem is that carrying all of that is exhausting.
One thing I’ve been learning is that eventually, you reach the end of yourself.
I’m tired of trying to force life to go my way.
Tired of trying to control people.
Tired of trying to prove myself.
Tired of trying to be my own god.
And maybe that’s exactly where God has been leading me all along—to the end of myself—not to destroy me, but to bring me to the place where I finally step off the throne and let Him be God.
Dying to self is an emptying.
It’s opening your clenched hands and pouring everything you’ve been gripping so tightly at Jesus’ feet.
Your plans.
Your expectations.
Your reputation.
Your rights.
Your fears.
Your need to control the outcome.
Not just setting them down for a moment.
Leaving them there.
Come what may.
This kind of surrender isn’t passive resignation.
It’s active trust.
And it looks something like this:
Stop insisting that your will must win.
Stop demanding that life go your way.
Stop seeking to be made much of.
Stop living as though you know better than the One who created you.
When you die to yourself, you’re choosing to believe that God’s wisdom is better than yours, His timing is better than yours, and His plans are better than yours—even when you don’t understand them.
As it turns out, this is where real life begins.
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
The life we try so hard to protect is often the very thing that keeps us from experiencing the life God wants to give.
So how do you die to self?
By stepping off the throne you were never meant to occupy and trusting the One who has always belonged there.
That’s not the loss of yourself.
It’s the beginning of becoming who you were created to be.
More yourself.
More alive.
