This will be my last blog for a month, as I am going overseas on family business, but please feel free to look over some earlier posts to get the full picture of the exchanged life. I will resume on July 7th.
The Christians of the early church have been described as being "incorrigibly happy, completely unafraid, and nearly always in trouble." That is gloriously true, and Paul gives us an illustration of this attitude in 2 Corinthians when he was in a situation that was beyond human endurance. "We were burdened beyond measure," he says, "....so that we despaired even of life."
Then he goes on, "Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead." He was adopting this attitude: Our present difficulty is not our problem; it is His problem. It is in the hands of our God, who raises the dead. Here was Paul dying to self, and this allowed him to hand the whole situation over to the One in him, Jesus Christ, the God of resurrection power.
Dying to self is a wonderful position to be in, because dead people cannot die, and dead people do not have problems. You see, every time you give yourself the right to have a problem or the right to worry about something, you give yourself the right to live your own life. However, if you adopt an attitude of total dependence on the Life of the Lord Jesus, the only life with which God will ever credit you, then no matter how threatening a situation may be, you can relate it to Him. You can say, "Thank you Lord ! This is no longer my problem or my worry; it is Yours."
This is the quality of life that gives you "the peace that passes all understanding." It is the quality of life that amazes other people, leaving them perplexed and baffled as they see you remain on such an even keel in situations which would completely demoralize them. This is the privilege that is yours and mine in Jesus Christ. It applies to every single situation in life without exception, to every decision you may be confronted with today, to every temptation that faces you, and to every responsibility you may be called upon to carry. This truth always applies: If you are in Him and He is in you, you are complete. (Colossians 2: 10) Paul needed no crutches, because through dependence on Christ's completeness and competency, he himself was completely competent.
To be wholly and completely and exclusively dependent on Christ's competence - THAT IS THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. It is not just the monopoly of a few, nor is it the privilege only of God's special favourites. It is the Life for which you were redeemed. It does not mean that you will avoid pressures and threats and discomforts, but you can know that in every situation, you have the complete, total, and absolute answer...in Christ, your Life. He is the answer. To live a life less than this is to miss the whole point of your redemption !
Thank you for your patience and God bless you as you put these principles into practice......Andrew.
Never break your heart trying to be someone else. In the first place, you never will be. You will always be you and no one else. The person who gets up in the morning will be the person who went to sleep the night before; so you might as well get reconciled to the fact that you are the person you are going to live with for the rest of your days.
In the second place, this is the way God wants it. He never intended that you should be anyone else, and He wants you to be the person that He intended you to be.
To understand this better, have you ever noticed the apparent contradiction in what Jesus says about yourself ? He said, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself." (Matthew 16: 24). It is quite evident from this statement that there is within each of us a self to be denied, a self to be rejected. On another occasion, however, Jesus said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22; 39). If you are to love your neighbor as yourself, then you must first love yourself, or else love for your neighbor would become meaningless. It would appear therefore that there is a legitimate place for self-love. In addition to a self to be rejected, there must be a self to be respected.
How then is self-respect to be reconciled with self-rejection ? Can they coexist ? The self you must reject is the self that the flesh makes of you when the flesh is dominant within your soul, abusing and misusing your personality. The self you have the right to respect is the self that Christ makes of you, filling you with His Holy Spirit, enhancing and using your personality. There is most certainly a legitimate place for healthy self-respect as a Christian, but it is the self-respect that derives from your personal relationship with Jesus.
On this basis, you can learn to love the most unlovely of your neighbors, because you know that if there is anything you can love or respect about yourself, it is only what Christ has made of you. You know that what Christ has made of you, He can also make of him or her. You do not lose your own personality when, by faith, you take your place with Christ in death. On the contrary, a transformation takes place within your personality. You simply come under new management. This new life which has begun is, of course, the Life of the Lord Jesus, and your personality becomes His means of expression. He, as God, "is all the while effectually at work in you, energizing and creating in you the power and desire, both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight" (Philippians 2: 13, Amplified).
When you are prepared for the Lord Jesus Christ to get "in business" like that, you will not want to be anyone else ! You will be far too excited discovering what He intends you to be !
You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3: 3.
There is a moment of truth for every human soul to whom the Holy Spirit, through the human spirit, has revealed the wickedness of sin. It is so easy to become familiar with Bible language without receiving any real revelation of truth. God wants to bring you, no matter how bitter the experience may be, to the place of self-discovery, to the moment of truth.
In startling reality, the truth as expressed by Paul may dawn upon your soul: "I am a creature of the flesh - carnal, unspiritual, having been sold into slavery under the control of sin." This passage in Romans (7: 14) reveals how the human soul is exploited by the subtle principle of sin within, and clearly defines the conflict within you. One part of you says,"I acknowledge and agree that the Law is good (or morally excellent) and that I take sides with it." In your human spirit, the Holy Spirit is bearing witness to all that is good and right and noble; to your enlightened moral conscience, every act and attitude of sin is an offense.
Then there is the other part of you, "the sin principle which lives within me, fixed and operating in my soul" (Romans 7: 21). You realize that when you want to do what is right and good, evil is ever present with you and you are subject to it's insistent demands.
The moment of truth comes when you quit exchanging courtesies with the flesh and reject it to it's face, naming it for the treacherous, wicked, worthless thing it is. At this climactic stage of your Christian life you realize that there can be no compromise with the flesh, and that peaceful coexistence with a principle satanically hostile to the law of God and to the reestablishment of His sovereignty within your soul is now beyond the bounds of possibility. You realize that it was never God's purpose to improve the flesh, to educate it or to tame it, let alone Christianise it. It has always been God's purpose that the flesh - condemned, sentenced, and crucified with Jesus Christ - might be left buried in the tomb and replaced by the resurrection Life of the Lord Jesus Himself.
The risen Christ must exercise control in your mind, in your emotions, and in your will, expressing Himself through your personality. Paul described this clearly in his concern for the Ephesian Christians, when he prayed for them: "For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth derives it's name. I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." (Eph. 3: 14-17)
You have stripped off the old self with it's evil practices, and you have clothed yourselves with the new spiritual self, which is ever in the process of being renewed and remolded into fuller and more perfect knowledge....after the image of Him Who created it. Colossians 3: 9-10 (Amplified)
The true life of a genuine Christian is miraculous. What defines a miracle ? It is something that happens for which there is no possible explanation except God ! The Lord Jesus reveals to us that our Christian life, if it is genuine, cannot be explained apart from Him. He says of us, "Without me you can do nothing." What He expects from you is not the sensational or the spectacular, but simply the miraculous, which you experience by faith.
How do you walk by faith ? By exposing every new situation to the Lord Jesus who, as God, lives in you through the Holy Spirit - every threat, promise, opportunity, responsibility, problem, no matter what. Stand back and say, "Thank You for all of this, Lord Jesus. Thank You for what You will do so that I can live miraculously. You have been waiting for me to be available so that You can live Your life through me, which would otherwise be utterly impossible for me." Giving thanks in this way is the evidence of true faith.
Then, every step you take, every word you speak, everything you do, everything you are, is an expression of the Son of God living in you. It means letting Him think through your thinking, letting Him react through your reactions, letting Him decide through your decisions. You discover that the Life you possess as a born-again Christian is "of Him, through Him, and to Him" every moment you are on earth.
You may be thinking, "If such a life is totally of Him, through Him, and to Him, then where do I come in ?" You do not. That is just where you go out ! God credits only one Person with the right to live in you, and He is Jesus Christ; so reckon yourself to be dead to all that you are apart from all that Christ is, and alive only unto God in all that you are, because of all that He is (Romans 6: 4-11). It is for you to be; it is for Him to act. Rest in Him, fully available to the saving life of Christ.
Why do so few Christians enjoy this miraculous resurrection Life ? Mostly because they are educated out of it. They are taught to repudiate the indwelling presence of a risen Lord, and instead they are told to do their best for Jesus, to copy His example, to flex their own spiritual muscles, to stand up and be counted, to clench their fists and throw out their chest. They are taught everything except to repent and to recognize that you and I were created to be inhabited by our Maker. They are taught in prayer to beg and say "Please" instead of "Thank You" as they relax and rest in Christ.
Let us constantly and at all times offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of lips that thankfully acknowledge and confess and glorify His name. Hebrews 13: 15 (amplified)
Suppose you were digging a hole, and I offered to give you a rest. How would I do it ? While you continued shoveling, I could call down a suggestion to you , such as, "Try tossing the dirt over your left shoulder instead of your right." I could sing a song about digging, or discuss all the latest philosophical thinking that might relate to it.
Would any of that give you rest ? No, it would more likely give you a heart attack. Yet those approaches are very much like what today's Christianity tries to do to bring rest to struggling believers, all in vain.
How could I truly give you rest if you were in that hole digging ? Obviously, there is only one way: You must get out and let me get in. You must drop the spade and let me pick it up. You must quit and let me take over. That is the way the Lord Jesus wants to give you and me rest. "Come to Me," He says, "all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." This is His offer. He is saying to us, "Get out, and let Me get in. Vacate, and let me occupy."
This is what happens when you take Christ at His word, when you come to Him and say, "Lord Jesus, I want the kind of rest that only You can give me." You bow yourself out and bow Him in. In true repentance you say, "Lord Jesus, I cannot, and You never said I could. You never expected me to do this on my own." It is true; I cannot - but in genuine confidence I acknowledge that You can ! Therefore I will translate what I know and believe into faith, and will let You do it. Knowing this, and doing it, is such a relief !
What happens next ? As you vacate, incredibly enough the Lord does occupy. He surprises you beyond your wildest dreams. You discover at last that God is big enough for the job. Your heart is filled with joy, and this experience of His adequacy strengthens your faith for the next situation that arises when you recognize your need for Him, your need for His rest and relief from your own ineffective self-effort. Then, when the next time of testing comes and you begin to feel weary and burdened once again, you can say,
"Lord Jesus, thanks for what You did last time. It was fantastic ! I had been baffled and could not see any possible solution to the problem I faced, but You came through magnificently.
However, the situation I am facing now is ten times worse, but that is exciting, Lord Jesus, because this gives You ten times more opportunity to demonstrate that, as God, You are never less than big enough ! So I thank You ! To your amazement, magnificently, He handles the situation in His own way and in His own time. You have learned to walk by faith, and every new experience of His adequacy strengthens your confidence as you receive more and more of His grace. That is how we learn to grow in grace.
Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you can find rest for your souls.....Matthew 11: 29.
There is a wonderful discovery God wants you to make, one that is absolutely basic to an intelligent understanding of the Christian life. This discovery is not only charged with comfort and encouragement for your soul, but is calculated to deliver you from heartbreak, frustration, and despair which are the unhappy lot of so many sincere Christians in their earnest endeavours to please God in the energy of the flesh.
It is not a question of improving or being reformed, but of substitution, receiving a God-given Life, a life for which we have nothing to offer to God in exchange. God tells us that the old Adamic nature within you, called the flesh, has no redeeming feature about it. It is entirely without remedy. For your own spiritual well-being, it is absolutely essential that you recognize the fact that this old nature will never change it's character. All the wickedness of which it is capable today, it will be capable of tomorrow, or fifty years from now if you are still alive. There is absolutely no salvageable content within it.
What a relief it must be for you to discover that in all your attempts to harness the flesh in the service of Jesus Christ, and in all your painful endeavours to introduce it to godly principles of life and conduct, God has never expected anything of you but the hopeless failure you have been ! You have been trying to do the impossible ! The Galatian Christians had made the same mistake, for they had been trying to achieve holiness in their own strength. Outward form and ritualistic patterns had become a substitute for the spontaneous expression of the Life of Christ within. Paul therefore addressed them as " foolish."
The flesh (human effort) within you has never ceased to love sin, and never will. Given half a chance, it will always manifest it's corruption and depravity. This is why the godliest of men and women still have latent within them the most terrible potential for evil. It is the godliest of people who know it best, for it is the acknowledgement of this very fact which is the secret of their godliness. They have learned, often by bitter experience, that character does not change for the better by improving the flesh, but only by allowing it to be replaced by the Holy Spirit. Only He can render it's pernicious appetites inoperative.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" (Jeremiah 17: 9). Be persuaded therefore of the wickedness of your own heart, and humbly confess it before God. Never be shocked or dismayed at the amazing capacity for sin that lies within you, for this is the nature of your case. It is only when you are honest enough to face up to these facts that you will have, on the one hand, a big enough view of what the Lord Jesus came into this world to do for you; and on the other hand, the desire to let Him do it !
Christ........is our life. Colossians 1: 4
The Lord Jesus , as the true Son of God, was born complete with the Father's DNA - the Divine Nature from Above. The true believer in Christ now shares that same DNA, that same completeness: "For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ." (Colossians 2: 9,10) What a birthright is ours in Him ! Not only do we escape from the moral decay (rottenness and corruption) that is in the world, but we also become partakers of the divine nature.
It was God's original intention that by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, every human being should fully experience His Life and become a participant in the divine nature. He then controls your mind, your emotions, and your will. By all that you do and say and are, His Life and likeness are expressed through you. People around you become aware of the fact, though they may not understand it, that by something God Himself has done, you have become a partaker of all that He is.
There is something frighteningly authoritative about the look of quiet, unflinching confidence upon the face of someone who knows that he or she is right and at peace with God. The face of Stephen, the first martyr, conveyed this look when the rulers of Jerusalem falsely brought him to trial:"All who sat on the council, looking steadfastly at him, saw his face as the face of an angel." (Acts 6:15) He denounced their guilt without any suggestion of apology, without any hint of fear, and they were cut to the heart.
It was this look upon the face of the Lord Jesus which, perhaps more than anything else, frightened Herod and Pontius Pilate on that day when He stood trial before them. A bad conscience is always uneasy in the presence of truth. You may shoot truth between the eyes when it looks you quietly in the face, but it will not be truth which falls victim to your bullet. It was not truth that lay bleeding and dying on the day Stephen was stoned to death; nor was it truth that hung upon a cross to be buried in a tomb, where sin was condemned and Satan himself judged and defeated.
That is why you can now be at peace with God, enjoying a peace that gives you that sense of quiet, unflinching confidence that comes only from Him, through His DNA within you thanks to an exchanged life.
In Christ, you too are filled with the Godhead - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - and reach full spiritual stature.
This will be my last blog for a month, as I am going overseas on family business, but please feel free to look over some earlier posts to get the full picture of the exchanged life. I will resume on July 7th.
