I recently wrote a few pieces about the flesh and death. I wrote that the flesh that demands deliverance in the here and now, will not die easily. The flesh hates pain. It hates sickness. It hates hunger. It hates to be controlled, but most of all it hates to actually die. For death is the end of it. The corruptible flesh we now walk around in, will be raised in in-corruption. And therefore, flesh, in all its strength, will rage against its own inevitable end. I argued that this is why, for the most part, much of Christendom desperately desires healing miracles. It’s driven by the flesh and not by the Spirit. And so we see professing Christians go to enormous lengths to avoid death. They will travel thousands of miles and spend a lot of money to attend some kind of “healing,” services with the latest Benny Hinn type. Even into old age they will ravage their body with chemo in order to get six more months or six more weeks.

Enough to say that those who are earthly minded have a desperate need for miracles and so on because this world and everything in it demands to be satisfied in the here and now. Those whose minds are set on the things of heaven, know that the flesh and this life here on earth is but a vapor and in those saints, passing from this world to the next becomes something very beautiful because long before they die their flesh had been starved of its own self importance. Christ in them increased, and their flesh decreased. And so they pass on easily and beautifully into the next world as opposed to those who have been dominated all of their lives by their flesh and their emotions, who would never dream of “taking up their cross daily,” because they have fed themselves on a daily diet of how to “live their best lives now.” And so the last line of one of my posts said “This is life, all else is merely the flesh making loud the noise of its death.” And because of that line, a dear sister in the Lord, who I know very well and who shall remain anonymous, wrote to me and told me of her personal story that dramatically highlights this truth. This is what she wrote to me…….

I just read your Facebook post. That last sentence, “the flesh making loud the noise of its death,” made me think of the morning I watched my mother die. (her mother was a professing Christian of the Charismatic persuasion) My mom did not have peace in the last months, weeks and days of her death. She was an obstinate woman who refused to surrender wholly to God’s sovereignty over her life. The whole experience of watching my mother be consumed physically by her illness and slowly dying, both physically and spiritually, before my eyes, is not something I can really put into words. Deep down inside, my mother harbored resentment toward me and it only served to make her like a wounded coyote that you’re trying to help, but it won’t let you help it, it will just try to bite you.

Abandoned by my father and despised by my mother. Yet, in the economy of God and in ways that only He works, He brought my mother back to me in the last few years of her life. I put a roof over her head and I cared for her needs. She had  always chosen men and relationships over me, and most of my care throughout my life came from my grandparents. Yet, the one who didn’t care for me, my mother, was the one God chose for me to take care of. The whole thing seemed like a tragic, yet strangely fitting irony. The last time I saw her while she was conscious and awake was the day she moved back to her home State to die. She was furious with me because in her mind, I incorrectly wrapped one of the items she was taking with her. Of course I had not but this was an echo of our relationship.She thought I was mocking her. I wasn’t. But that was just how it was. She was always mad at me for something I didn’t do right.

The morning she died, we watched her stop breathing. We began to weep as she lay there for what seemed like an age. Then her body violently gasped for air. My siblings and I were startled. Then she stopped breathing again. We thought this was it. Yet, about a minute later, she violently gasped again. It was loud and violent. It was totally macabre and disturbing. The whole thing was surreal because you instinctually want to help, you want to fix it, save them. I watched her body try desperately to hold on, literally to her very last breath. There was nothing I could do but watch it happen. Watch “the flesh make the loud noise of its death.” And as I watched my mother refuse to die, I remember thinking, “this is like our flesh, it refuses to die, but it must.” It does everything it can to hold onto the soul, it doesn’t want to let go. It keeps gasping for air, desperate to hang on, dragging us back down to the earthly plane. But it must die. We must let it die so that we can fly into His presence.

To experience first-hand, the terrible hold that the flesh has upon the spirit is terrifying. Only Christ could break a grip like that. I saw the human body desperately cling to the spirit within it, refusing to let go. Like a callous machine, it forced her to keep breathing with cruel disregard for the spirit’s longing to be set free. Death is the ultimate surrender. And my mom hung on to the bitter end. The spiritual battle that took place those last few days was fierce. The day before she was incapacitated with meds, she cursed God. I got there the next day. Much of my mom’s resentment toward me was because I belong to the Beloved. I have belonged to him since he knit me in her womb. There was always an underlying tension between us and I never understood it until later in life. It seems mind boggling how God chooses his hidden ones. The very womb I came from rejected him to the end. Yet, I still have hope that in her last moments, she did, in fact, surrender. In the end, we will all surrender, one way or another.