Atlanta suspected killer, Brian Nichols, 33, was living the same kind of life many Americans are living—a dead life.

Nichols was a jailed defendant in a rape trial when he overpowered a guard while being escorted to the courtroom. Later he took a young woman, Ashley Smith, hostage for seven hours.

Smith took advantage of the tense situation to testify about life in Christ. During their time together, Smith told Nichols, "You need hope for (your) life."

Nichols responded that he was already dead.

"Look at me," Smith said the man told her. "Look at my eyes. I'm already dead."

God's Word tells us we're already dead too, do you remember? Paul writes to the people who lived in Colossae and tells them in Colossians 3:3-5 this fascinating thing about their condition--and ours:

Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life--even though invisible to spectators--is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too--the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ. And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God.

Brian Nichols, fresh from jail, on a murderous rampage, said he felt dead. What about you? Is the side of you that wants to choose a sinful life, dead? God says it is, so why don't you live like it is. As a matter of fact, Paul also told followers of Christ in Rome a few things on "dying to self." Listen to what he has to say:

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. … In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, … The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.

The law always ended up being used as a Band-Aid on sin instead of a deep healing of it. And now what the law code asked for but we couldn't deliver is accomplished as we, instead of redoubling our own efforts, simply embrace what the Spirit is doing in us.

Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's action in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. …

Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the spirit of Christ, won't know what we're talking about. But for you who welcome him, in whom he dwells--even though you still experience all the limitations of sin--you yourself experience life on God's terms. It stands to reason, doesn't it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he'll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ's!

Brian Nichols, a kidnapper in Atlanta, needed to be delivered from that "dead life." He needed the hope of a relationship with Jesus Christ. So do we all. Even believers sometimes get caught back in the dead life—trying to do things on their own, and failing. How about you? Need a hope infusion?

In his classic book, "The Cost of Discipleship," Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young Lutheran pastor who became a martyr at 39 while working to defeat Hitler, writes these words:

"Fellowship with Jesus and obedience to his commandment come first, and all else follows."

He goes on to give us hope and reminds us that we cannot do this on our own. "… we have here either a crushing burden, which holds out no hope … or else it is the quintessence of the gospel, which brings the promise of freedom and perfect joy. Jesus does not tell us what we ought to do but cannot; he tells us what God has given us and promises to still give."

Andrew Murray, who lived in South Africa in the 1800s wrote this in his work "Absolute Surrender," "Can a man fail with his heart full of delight in God's law and with his will determined to do what is right? Yes! That is what Romans 7 teaches. There is something lacking. Not only must I delight in the law of God … but I need divine omnipotence (power) to work in me. The reason for the weakness of your Christian life is that you try to work it out on your own, only allowing God to help you when you are desperate"

Are you tired of just asking for help from God when you're desperate? God wants to give you so much more! He wants to give you life.

Greg Leith is part of the leadership team at Biola University where he is responsible to work with and minister to marketplace leaders. Prior to joining the team at Biola, Greg was an executive with The ServiceMaster Company in various leadership capacities for 20 years throughout North America. Greg and his wife Shelley, a staff member at The Purpose Driven Movement in the publishing arena, speak to couples on marriage and family issues at the Family Life Marriage conferences www.familylifecanada.org, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ. You may contact him at greg.leith@biola.edu