Nothingness

I've been reading another book by Richard Foster, simply entitled, "Prayer." I got it from my mother who must have bought it second-hand because it has someone else's notes in addition to her special kind of markings. Now it has mine, because it is a book to mark and take notes in. I wish everyone had this book. I keep wanting to blog it every time I read it but then I would be copying the whole book so you may as well go out and buy your own because it is just that good.

I've been reading the chapter on 'The Prayer of Relinquishment.'
I really must share some of this with you.
He is writing about the death of our will and later goes on to how to relinquish our will to God in prayer. Here are some words leading up to that teaching, written on page 54.

""The death of my own will"-strong language. But all of the great devotional masters have found it so. Soren Kierkegard...notes, "God creates everything out of nothing--and everything which God is to use He first reduces to nothing.""

"Do you know what a great freedom this crucifixion of the will is? It means freedom from what A.W.Tozer called "the fine threads of the self-life, the hyphenated sins of the human spirit." It means freedom from the self-sins: self-sufficiency, self-pity, self-absorption, self-abuse, self-aggrandizement, self-castigation, self-deception, self-exaltation, self-depreciation, self-indulgence, self-hatred, and a host of others like them. It means freedom from the everlasting burden of always having to get our own way. It means freedom to care for others, to genuinely put their needs first, to give joyfully and freely."

"Little by little we are changed by this daily crucifixion of the will. Changed, not like a tornado changes things, but like a grain of the sand in an oyster changes things. New graces emerge: new ability to cast all our care upon God, new joy at the success of others, new hope in a God who is good."

And so on.

I just thought about the verse I keep thinking about from Isaiah where God promises to do something new. It appears, from the words above, that we must die and become nothing before we can experience the something new. After Jesus gave up His will and died, He was raised again into a new life. There is always a promise of resurrection after death. Why do we try so hard not to 'die'? What we will receive in exchange for our 'death' is so much greater than the 'life' we think we need to hold on to. But then again, if He struggled to give up His will, why would we think we could surrender without a struggle?