Do not let the world cheat you out of your death in Christ.  The world will offer you false life and false reality so that you can run away from the death to which your Lord calls you.  Take up your cross.  Look carefully at your life in this world and you will find an opportunity to embrace this death.  Out of this death, you will live.  There is no life without it.  Eternal life is the end result of this death to which you are being called (Philippians 3:10-11).  “If we have died with him, we will also live with him” (2 Timothy 2:11b).  We cheat ourselves if we miss it.