Prefer Death to Sin

Most of humanity (I think) would take a wage instead of the work. To get paid and not have to do the work required for the payment has become the American Dream.

The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. Does our America Dream reach to the spiritual application? Do I desire the wage without the work? Do I desire death instead of sin?

Wayne Grudem, in discussing death and the intermediate state, notes that the martyrs of old preferred to die rather than sin. The sin presented them was typically denial of Christ, but the general application struck me. Would I rather die than sin? If someone stuck a gun to my head and told me to steal a piece of bread, would I do it? Or out of such shear hatred of sin and godlessness would I refuse to commit even the smallest atrocity and ask for death rather than sin?

O God that you would give me the resolve to choose death over sin. That I would resist sin to the point of shedding my own blood. That if an arm or eye causes me to sin I would pluck it out, preferring to lose that part than let sin take hold of me. Let me not love my life so much as to hold it back from honoring you in resisting and conquering sin.