Death

What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take up the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints. O Lord, truly I am Your servant; I am Your servant, the son of Your maidservant; You have loosed my bonds. I will offer to You the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the Lord. I will pay my vows to the Lord now in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the Lord’s house, in the midst of you, O Jerusalem. Praise the Lord!

Psalm 116:15-19

Don’t nail yourself to a cross. 

If Jesus has paid for your sins and freed you from the bondage sin had on your life, you don’t need to pay for your sins again yourself. The first step in moving on from your sin is knowing that you can move on and be free. You are not sin’s slave, you have a new master.

For we will surely die and become like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. Yet God does not take away a life; but He devises means, so that His banished ones are not expelled from Him. 2 Samuel 14:14

If Christ has become your master, He will not allow you to be banished even when death expels you from His presence on earth. He devised a means (by taking upon Himself the punishment we deserved) to gather you back up so you can stand in His presence. 

God sees death much differently than you do.

He has quite a different perspective on physical death than we could ever have. Death is primarily a separation. The first death was a separation of man from God, which resulted in physical death, the separation of soul/spirit from the dust of the earth. Satan wanted to use death to separate you from the good world God created, but God does not allow Satan to have the victory, instead, He uses the separation of death to separate you from the influence of sin and gathers you back up, giving you a new body and giving you a dwelling place on the new earth. God sees the death and regathering events at the same time, in the twinkling of an eye. He does not leave you alone in the moment of death, He holds you together until the dust falls off you and then he rebuilds you with a new body that allows you to be close to Him.

You are not alone.

In John 12:23-26, Jesus speaks of His upcoming death. He says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain” (24, NKJV).  “Unless the grain ... dies … it remains alone.” Jesus seems to be indicating that death is the solution for the problem of the grain being alone. The first thing God declared to be not good was for mankind to be alone, which He solved by giving man a woman. Once mankind sinned, he was separated from God and once again became alone. God could have left mankind in the garden to eat of the tree of life and live forever, but sin would make him alone and separated from God. What if death is a solution not a punishment - a solution for being alone. What if aloneness, not death, is the greatest evil in our world.