June 2026

June 2026: Death to Self

Surrender Part 2 — The Ongoing Crucifixion

In January, you were introduced to Surrender — the open hand, the bowed knee, the willingness to say, 'Not my will, but Yours.' You learned its foundations, traced its contours in Scripture, and began practicing the daily posture of yielding. But now we go deeper. Much deeper.

June is not Surrender Part 2 in the sense of reviewing last semester's notes. It is Surrender taken to its logical and terrifying conclusion. Because the end of true surrender is not merely a submissive posture — it is death. The death of self. The ongoing crucifixion of the old nature so that Christ alone might live and reign.

The five postures of SHAWL — Surrender, Humility, Abide, Waiting, & Listening — are not merely spiritual practices. They are invitations into transformation. And transformation, in the Kingdom of God, always passes through death before it arrives at resurrection. You cannot skip the cross to get to Easter. The tomb is not optional on the way to new life.

These thirty days will take you through thirty specific dimensions of death to self. Some will feel familiar. Others may surprise or unsettle you — areas of the self you did not know were still entrenched. Welcome both. The Spirit is at work.

The goal is not morbidity. It is not spiritual self-punishment. The goal is the extraordinary life that emerges on the other side of dying — the life of Christ, flowing through you with less and less obstruction as the self continues to decrease and He continues to increase.

Come. Fall into the ground. The harvest is waiting.

For the next seven months, I will be giving you the scripture references only, without the verses written out. This is intentional. My prayer and my goal is that you would not simply read what I have written, but that you would open your own Bible, examine the passages for yourself, and test everything that is written here against the Word of God. I want you to learn to dig deeper into the Scriptures — to chew on them, to wrestle with them, to let the Spirit teach you directly from the page.

The believers in Berea were commended for this very practice. Luke tells us in Acts 17:11 that they were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica because they did not simply take Paul at his word. They received his message eagerly, but then they went home and searched the Scriptures day after day to see whether what he taught was true. That is the posture I am asking you to take with these devotionals. Do not take my word for it. Open the Word and search the Scriptures for yourself.

Paul charged Timothy in the same spirit. In 2 Timothy 2:15, he tells him to work hard, to labor at handling the Word of God rightly, so that he might stand before God as one approved and unashamed. The Christian life is not built on someone else's study; it is built on your own labor in the Word. The Lord rewards those who hunger for Him in His Word and who labor over it.

So before each day, open your Bible. Read the passage slowly. Read the verses before it and after it. Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you. Then come back to the devotional. Let what is written here lead you back to the text, never away from it. If something I have written does not line up with what you read in Scripture, throw out what I have written and hold fast to what God has said. His Word is the standard. My words are only a doorway.

Scripture references throughout these devotionals are taken from the New Living Translation (NLT).