Introduction - Rediscovering Jesus.

To be entirely honest, I know of nothing quite so boring as Christianity without Christ.
Countless people have stopped going to church simply because they are sick of going through the motions of a dead religion. They are tired of trying to start a car on an empty tank. What a pity that there are not more people around to show them that Jesus Christ is alive.
On the other hand, I know of nothing so utterly exciting as being a Christian, sharing the very Life of Jesus Christ on earth right here and now, being caught up with Him into the relentless, invincible purposes of the almighty God, and having available to us all the limitless resources of Deity for accomplishing those purposes.
Can you imagine anything more exciting than that ?

We need to rediscover Jesus. It does not happen all at once. Slowly, bit by bit, there is that revelation, and then a moment of truth. It becomes so clear, so divinely obvious, so completely logical. Profoundly simple and simply profound. This profound simplicity is something that the apostle Paul spoke of in his second letter to the Corinthians - "I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." Paul was anxiously concerned that nothing in their lives would detract from the sheer simplicity which is in Christ, the centrality of a Person, the Lord Jesus himself, in residence within their redeemed humanity.

Experiencing this simplicity is the greatest need today throughout the Church worldwide. This means encountering the risen living Lord who shares His Life with us on earth on our way to heaven.....so that He may accomplish through us what He began to do in His physical body 2000 years ago. What a fantastic privilege ! To help move us toward that rediscovery and that privilege, we will focus continually on the Lord Jesus, because only Christ is capable of living the Christian life, for the very obvious and simple reason that He is the Christian life. We will look to Him to learn how He lived as Man in His relationship to the Father when He came to live upon this earth. He will show us how He intends us to live in our relationship to Him, helping us to discover in fuller depth what it means not just to become a Christian, but actually to be one, and giving us new vision for all that being a Christian really means.

Do you know what it is to live purposefully ? Is there an urgent sense of mission or some compelling thrust within you which makes life add up to the sheer adventure that God always intended life to be ? Or are you simply engaged in the struggle for existence and survival ? Worse still, have you been caught up into the rat race of competitive existence ? Haunted by the fear of being overtaken by others at the next bend in the road ? Breathlessly trying to keep up with events that travel faster than your ability to cope with them ? If so, there is good news awaiting you, good news about a treasury of purpose and truth and wisdom to be found in the person of Jesus, for living purposefully means trading our poverty for Christ's wealth....our weakness for His strength. We exchange the bankruptcy of the fallen Adam for all the fullness of His Life, and we discover the sheer adventure of allowing Jesus to be God in our own experience, for God He is !

That is why detaching Christianity from Christ is to reduce it to a dead religion, impersonal to Him and impersonal to you, just an intellectual exercise or a sentimental formula - and Christianity is neither ! It is Christ. It involves a principle of life which pulsates with divine energy and cannot be explained apart from God Himself. It is essentially miraculous even though it does not have to be sensational. It is always supernatural, lying beyond the scope of mortal man, apart from the indwelling presence of the risen Son of God. Just as Jesus acted in the sinless humanity which the Father had prepared for Him in the thirty-three years of His life on earth, so He wants to behave in your humanity presented to Him now. The Christian life is nothing less than the life which He lived then....lived now by Him in you !

Please watch this space for the next exciting installment every week, and be blessed !