John 12:24-25, Mark 8:34

Now there are loads of different ways of doing this, but to save you having a months worth of stuff to read let me suggest just two things that might help you.

Why not take some time to ask God the following questions:

• Are there any habits, attitudes or behaviours in my life I need to let die?


• Is there any desire I am holding onto and striving for that I need to let go of?

For me the second question is something God has recently really challenged me on. At the moment I live in a lovely, but quite small apartment in the middle of Nottingham city centre. Over the summer a number of my friends moved into new 3 bedroom houses with lovely gardens and big storage cupboards. Their houses all seemed to be in nice peaceful streets while I am often woken up at 3am by drunk people walking home from the clubs who forget that the flats around them are actually occupied by people who might be asleep.

Suddenly I began to covet my friend's houses. I found myself surfing property pages and dreaming over having my own home. While the desire to one day have a house is not a bad thing, it became a desire I was striving for.

I remember my wonderful wise husband seeing me one night on the 'right move' real estate page and saying to me 'honey, let it go. You will only frustrate yourself'. Well, he was right. For about three months I had been in constant frustration. Eagerly desiring something I simply could not have.

Then in God's loving and gentle way he showed me a picture. He reminded me of an orchid I have. The first year I had it I was mortified when it lost all it's flowers and appeared to have died. Because I loved that orchid so much (it was an engagement present from Ben), I just couldn't get rid of it, so for nearly a year a pot stood on my window sill with a dead looking stalk in it.

To my amazement a day came when suddenly that dead stalk was filled with fresh new flower heads! What's more, there were even more than before! For anyone who knows about orchids, this is just a part of their life cycle, but to me it was a miracle.

Amidst all my striving for a new house God reminded me of this picture and challenged me to lay my desires down and trust him to bring fresh new life.

What a turning point this was for me! I prayed and asked God to help me let go of these desires and to trust him for the future. I knew I couldn't do it without his help because it had been on my mind for months now, but after that prayer something brilliant happened. Suddenly that driving desire left me and in it's place something fresh came. Where so much of my mind had been occupied by house envy, God started to replace it with a new joy in my job. I started getting excited again about things that I had grown complacent with.

So, I have no idea whether Ben and I will one day have a house of our own, but now it dosen't seem all that important to me. Through the experience I have learned to understand just a bit of what Jesus meant when he told his disciples:

'I tell you the truth, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.'