If you want a big tree, you don’t plant a big tree. No, you must plant a seed. This happens in the spring. When you look at the picture on the outside of the package, and you compare it to the contents, the two do not look the same. This is how nature works. You plant a seed, and then the plant comes up, but it does not look like the seed. When you have a bunch of seeds together, it could be apple, tomato, etc. If you place them together, you don’t know the difference until you plant them. But when they grow up they all look different. When you plant a seed and it dies, what really dies? The shell of the seed dies not the heart of the seed.

Now, this is critical because the life does not come from the shell, it originates from the inside, but that life cannot come forth until the outside of it dies away. This is what dying to self is. Then something new comes. Think about it, in the fall you will have acorns all over the place, but the acorns are what cause oak trees to come forth. So the acorn’s shell dies and dissolves, and the inside of the acorn produces the tree. The trunk of the tree, the leaves, the tree itself, the acorns produced on the tree did not come from the shell rather they came from the inside. The same is true of the Christian life. You have to allow the shell of low self-esteem, low self-image, tradition, ethnic stereotypes to die so the inside of you the hidden man of the heart can come forward!!!