Praise God—it is almost Sunday, the Lord's Day, the day of resurrection, one of God's 52 holy days a year! Toward the goal of getting us ready for Sunday Worship, here is Richard Sibbes. This snippet comes from a treatise of his, entitled, "Denial of the Best for the Church's Benefit.” (He is dealing with Phi-lippians 1:21-24.) . . .
"A second thing that I observe is this, that holy and gracious men, led by the Spirit of God, can deny themselves and their own best good for the church's benefit. They know that God has appointed them as instruments to convey good to others; and knowing this, they labor to attain to Paul's spirit, to desire to live; [yet] to have life in patience; and death [with regard to desire] in them-selves."The reason is, because a good man, as soon as he is a good man, has the spirit of love in him, and 'love seeks not its own,' (1 Cor. 13:6), but the good of another. And as the love of Christ and the love of God possesses and seizes upon the soul, so self-love decays. What is gracious love but a decay of self love? The more self-love decays, the more we deny ourselves."
