For those who "Walk in White"

from Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest:

DO YOU WALK IN WHITE?

"We were buried with Him...that just as Christ was raised from the dead...even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:4).

No one experiences complete sanctification without going through a "white funeral"--the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crucial moment of change through death, sanctification will never be more than an elusive dream. There must be a "white funeral," a death with only one resurrection--a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can defeat a life like this. It has oneness with God for only one purpose--to be a witness for Him.

Have you really come to your last days? You have often come to them in your mind, but have you really experienced them? You cannot die or go to your funeral in a mood of excitement. Death means you stop being. You must agree with God and stop being the intensely striving kind of Christian you have been. We avoid the cemetery and continually refuse our own death. It will not happen by striving, but by yielding to death. It is dying--being "baptized into His death" (Romans 6:3).

Have you had your own "white funeral," or are you piously deceiving your own soul? Has there been a point in your life which you now mark as your last day? is there a place in your life to which you go back in memory with humility and overwhelming gratitude, so that you can honestly proclaim, "Yes, it was then, at my 'white funeral,' that I made an agreement with God."

"This is the will of God, your sanctification..." (1 Thessalonians 4:3). Once you truly realize this is God's will, you will enter into the process of sanctification as a natural response. Are you willing to experience that "white funeral" now? Will you agree with Him that this is your last day on earth? The moment of agreement depends on you.

"Hoo hoo hoo! Look who knows so much, heh?"

Spectators at the cross of Calvary imagined a dramatic escape or rescue as the proof of Jesus' kingship. God had an infinitely greater demonstration in mind. The Son would not manage to escape from the hands of His captors or from the nails and wood that held Him, nor would someone else come to His rescue. He would go through the last extremity of what it means to be human, and by that very means, by death itself, He would destroy the power of death. He would become, by His obedient dying, the "Death of Death" and "Hell's Destruction."

When we, in our "lesser miseries," plead for escape or rescue, what unimaginable "solutions" God has stored up for us! But often, in response to our pleadings, the word is Trust Me.

--from The Music of His Promises, by Elisabeth Elliot