Consumed by Christ

I can not pinpoint it to a certain time or day, but the past few weeks have been filled with such great joy and enduring peace of being consumed and overwhelmed by the Spirit of the Living Christ. More than ever, I now can say with confidence that Christ is my life.

My whole life I have been painfully aware of my sinful heart and corrupted mind. With every passing year that awareness only grows. Jesus has always been important to me, and I knew that without Him I was lost. It pained me and angered me that I failed and would fall. I would call out desperately gripping for His grace and faithfulness, knowing them to be true. I longed for holiness and to please my Father.

It was at Bible College that the Lord took a hold of my heart, and I fell in love with my faithful Master. As I sat at His feet my life was illuminated. My awareness of my sinfulness grew even more, but also my awareness of His love and His grace grew as well. Every time I got frustrated with my sin, He would tell me “look at Me”. He would repeatedly raise my face to Him, and every returning glance became longer and steadier than the one before. He is glorious in His majestic holiness! The more my eyes dwelt on Him the more excited I became about knowing and beholding Him.  Heaven no longer made me want to experience life on earth first, but I now looked forward to the day when I will enter the Lord’s courts with expectancy and excitement. The Abiding Presence of the LORD became more and more real, a joy and a comfort. I tasted the joy of the LORD and my hunger was kindled greatly to “dwell in the house of my LORD all the days of my life” (Psalm 27:4).

My final semester the mystery of the Helper was unveiled to me. I came to know the Spirit of God as the Spirit of Christ received into my heart (for some reason, until then this did not connect in my mind). The following year, that I spent learning what it meant to abide in Christ and to walk in His Spirit, became the year of greatest disappointment in myself and the year of the most marvelous revival of Christ in my life. I had fallen deeply and, what pains me the most, consciously. Yet, the Father was so gentle and abounding in grace it broke me. His firm, yet tender hand lifted me up; and as I stood before Him, more aware of and enthralled by His grace than ever before, He began His work of restoration of His child anew. He gave me a sweeter and deeper understanding of the gospel of His grace and a living understanding of His Spirit. All the knowledge and information received during the college years became alive for me; His word became more alive and living than ever before.

The final blessing of my restoration was beyond anything I could ever imagine – Christ became my life. The more I beheld the Treasure of Heaven Christ Jesus my LORD, I became consumed by Him. He was no longer but a Friend, my Savior, my Lord, my Joy, my Strength… He was my LIFE! I was an earthen broken vessel with the Treasure of Heaven within – “the light of knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6-7). Oh, what joy and peace overwhelmed my soul that I would be bestowed such an honor! Yet, that was not the complete final blessing.

Galatians 2:20 was unfolded to me in all of it’s reality and bliss: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, BUT CHRIST LIVES IN ME, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me”. Because I was God’s child, He “sent forth the Spirit of His Son into [my] heart, crying out ‘Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:6).

Oh the delight that took a hold of me when the reality of God’s word hit home. The Spirit of the Living Christ dwelled in me! The righteous, loving, peaceful, kind, longsuffering, gentle, humble, holy God made me His abode! I realized that I could and should trust His ability in me, despite my own inability. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Oh, the joyous freedom that came upon me with this revelation! The picture of who Christ can be for me was complete and was unveiled to be the Life within me, my life. Christ as my salvation, as my strength, as my joy, as my peace, as my love now came together as one – Christ my life, God indwelling me, with whom I was made one.

The abundant life that Christ came to give was now clear to me, and I knew that it belonged to me. Moreover, I now knew how to keep, maintain, and to grow in it. The marvelous secret that I had been seeking my whole life – how to live the received new life – lie in the life itself. I knew that I could not trust myself to live out even a teensy part of the life of Christ’s righteousness. Only Christ within me could be trusted to live His Perfect Life in and through me! Galatians 6:15 reminds me that only God can bring lasting change in my life and make me into a new creation.

What I had longed for I already had! No longer did I pray, “God help me! Lord grow me in Your love, Your joy, Your peace, Your righteousness…” I no longer prayed to receive, for I knew I had. I began to pray in the faith of Christ within me prayers of trust and surrender to the Precious Life that I had – the Spirit of the Living Christ my life. Through the Spirit of Christ in me I now “eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith” (Galatians 5:5). My face unveiled and Christ seen clearly, my mind is renewed in prayer and by the word of God. My prayer remains that I would keep my eyes and mind on Christ my life; even (especially) when I don’t feel like it, that I would rest in His abiding overflowing presence. Consumed by His glorious beauty, enthralled by His goodness, I will trust Him to live in and through me His LIFE.

Between The Chapters: A Disciple's Mundane

When you read a biography you read overviews of significant stages in the described person’s life. Their substance is of such that often makes the reader wonder, why is his life not as exciting, as interesting, as productive as the life of the person he is reading about. We forget about what happens between the chapters – the everyday mundane. The raw truth is that life is not a biography. The unfair thing is that too often we place “biography” expectations of our own life and also of the lives of others. In our fast paced time and age, this expectation is continually increasing in its intensity. This trend only leads to frustration and disappointment. Most importantly, it hinders us from trusting and following God in the mundane.

Coming back from Bible College, I knew that it would be hard. It would be hard to settle down in one place for more than three months, to not have someone to pray with at any given moment, to not have an intensive bible class almost every day, to not have a place to easily run away from people, to not have given opportunities to serve and to minister, to not have countless opportunities for the Lord to speak something new into my life…I knew it would be hard because I knew that others (and subconsciously myself) had expectations of me – for me to know what is next and for that “something next” to be soon. This expectation in of itself hinders a believer in fully trusting his Lord. Expecting God to be faithful, according to His good promises, is trusting Him. Expectations of how and when He will be faithful undercut our trust. One may think, this issue has been addressed enough, but our pride does not put it to rest. Yes, it is our pride. This pride is revealed in our fear of not knowing the answers and not having evident progress. We want to say that we know what will be in the next chapter of our life. We want to be able to say that we started it.

Life is not a biography. It is mainly what happens between the chapters. The everyday mundane is not something you put in a book, but it is a substantial part of your life. Now you can live in expectancy of the “chapters”, or you can choose to enjoy the present “between the chapters”. The days, the months, the years in between are not worthless or unnecessary. They are a part of the Lord’s planned life for us as much as the “chapters” are a part of it.

The Gospels are biographies like no other. Now I am not comparing our life with the life of Jesus, though I do believe that He also experienced the every day mundane and He lived those days to the fullest. The disciples are also portrayed in the Gospels. We see the highlights of their life as followers of Jesus Christ. They actually walked and talked with the Blessed Son of God, but not every day did He tell them something new, or created a miracle before their eyes. Yet, every day they saw Him, they ate with Him, and they walked with Him. This was the disciple’s mundane – Jesus was with them and they were with Jesus. They trusted Jesus to be there for them, to feed and provide for them. Did they trust Him all the time? The Gospels record the multiple times they lacked in their faith. In the midst of the garden of Gethsemane and the lacking of faith, in the midst of walking on water with Jesus and failing in casting out a demon, in the midst of days of miracles and days of rest…Jesus was with the disciples and they were with Jesus.

The next time you find yourself pressured or pressuring yourself to “know the answers”, remember that what matters is that you are with Christ. Today is not about knowing what is tomorrow, but about knowing Jesus Christ and being with Him. The appropriate question is not “what are you doing/going to do”, but “what is the Lord doing today”. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus; it is to be about His business, doing with Him what He is doing. He is moving, doing and creating something constantly. There is always (and everywhere) something to join our Lord in. Ultimately, the disciple’s mundane is no longer mundane, for his days are with and for Jesus.