To Die Is Gain?

I was listening to a song by a Christian rapper, Trip Lee, and in this song is a line that goes,

I'm good, here come the pain.
I'm good, ya they can kill me,
I'm good, to die is gain.

And I as I was listening to these lines, I was just pumped up by it. I found myself thinking, "AMEN," or as my pastor so ecstatically preached the other week, "I AGREE!"

But as I continued to think on those words, "ya they can kill me...to die is gain," I began to think, "do I agree?" "Do I truly believe, 'to die is gain'?" Does how I live line up with that belief, "death is gain." And I was broken, it didn't line up. Intellectually I believe that five hundred percent but the evidence of my own life shows only a reluctance, a fear.

This is the challenge I want to present in this post. First, do we as Christians truly believe to die is gain. And second are we living like it.

I can't help but admire the man that was Paul. He truly lived like death is gain. Paul's desire was to depart this earth and be with Christ (Philippians 1:23) and yet he knew that God's plan for him was to remain (Philippians 1:24) and so, as I talked about in a much earlier post http://theprisonerssetfree.blogspot.com/2011/10/untuchable.html, Paul lived in an untouchable manner. He lived for Christ while in the back of his mind he knew death was much better (Philippians 1:21).

Trip Lee later on in the same song tells us why death is gain,

I know that I must suffer, that'll only make me tougher. 
Death is just a doorway to take me to my faithful lover....
Let the storms come hunt us and hurt us.
They can't take our Lord from us, we got us a verdict. Not guilty.

Romans 14:8 says,

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

Again the message is the same, we are the Lord's in life and death.

So again the challenge for me and that I am extending to you, Will we live in a manner that shows our "desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better?"