Happy New Year ! - here is a great challenge for all of us for the new year.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart, or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient, loving silence....that is dying to self. When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any unpunctuality, or any annoyance; when you stand face-to-face with waste, silly extravagance, spiritual insensibility, and endure it as Jesus did....that is dying to self. When you are content with any food, any offering, any climate, any society, any raiment, any interrogation, any interruption by the will of God....that is dying to self. When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to defend your own beliefs, your own good works, or itch for commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown....that is dying to self. When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met, and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit, and feel no envy, nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in more desperate circumstances....that is dying to self. When you receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, and can humbly submit inwardly, as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion, retaliation, self-sympathy, self-defense, self-vindication, self-justification, resentment, bitterness, unforgiveness in heart....that is dying to self! (Source Unknown)