Life from God

DEVOTIONALS: CHRIST IS MY LIFE

As believers, we need to pray and meditate, and to wait before God until our hearts are open to the consciousness that the everlasting God has a divine life within us which cannot exist but through Christ alone. The knowledge of this truth is not sufficient, we need to pursue it’s consciousness from the communing presence of God. The living of this divine life excludes use of our human nature. This new life must become a living reality in our life. The old life, our human nature, represents death eternal. Many often think that God has given us a spiritual life which now is our own, and that we are in charge of it, and we soon complain that we are failing. Of course we would. We live believing that we know enough to live it before God. But our life with people and our relationships with them prove that we don’t. We often see a gap between the knowledge which we believe and what we experience as daily life; if you sense this, do not be indifferent about it. We must learn to live as Jesus did: absolute dependence on the Father in everything. I have the life of God’s Son within me, given to me by God Himself, and it can only be maintained by God Himself, never by my self-efforts.

How do we live this life from God? How did Jesus live out His life on earth? He lived it in total dependence on God. He continually said, “The Son can do nothing of Himself… The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself.” (John 5:19; 14:10); “I can of My own self do nothing. My judgment is just, because I seek notMine own will.” (Jn 5: 30); “The word which you hear is not mine.” (Jn 14: 24) Do you see Jesus’ complete dependence on the Father? He waited always for the teaching, the commands, and the guidance of His Father. He prayed for power from the Father. Whatever He did, He did in the Name of the Father. The Son of God felt the need of much prayer: to bring down from heaven the life of God, and for maintaining the life of fellowship with His Father in prayer. Jesus lived a life of absolute dependence on God, and this is the life He brings to us.

We hear a lot about depending and trusting God, and we say: “that is what I want,” but we often forget its secret. It is Christ Himself, that must work all of the trusting and depending in us. I cannot truly trust and depend God on my own; my religious flesh is very active in this area. Yes, I need my Lord Jesus to completely trust in God; however, I must have Him as the power to trust – living within me. Believingly deny your human power and nail it to the cross by faith; take Christ Himself in His fullness, and not as a power that is a separated entity from Him, but His total life as the divine power. You need all of Christ (not part of Him) in order to trust your Father in full, all of Him to do your work of loving and serving others. That is, I do not need my determination or self-discipline or past experiences. Christ must live His own life of trusting the Father in me, Christ is my life. He is given to live His life in me, to live His power in me – daily. My human nature cannot depend or trust God. Trusting and depending God means not depending on self, and I do it by daily denying self-life, every moment. It is not a work I do for my life, but a life that Christ lives in me: lives His trusting on the Father, His depending on the Father – within me. But I need to deny my flesh, my self-will. The religious flesh must be recognized and denied completely, and I need to seek the Holy Spirit for this recognition. I must be aware of its deception that my self-life is now able to trust or depend on God. That is an absolute impossibility. Reject this by faith right away. My self-life cannot; I must deny my deceptive religious flesh, for it is my soul’s mortal enemy.

How do we enter in? If we are to enter into the “rest” of living by faith – the life of trusting and depending on God alone – it must begin here. We must be broken down from all self-confidence and self-trust. This brokenness doesn’t come on its own, revelation is needed to see in me the evilness of my own self-confidence and self-trust. The revelation is not given automatically upon request. This is the path Christ lived – depending absolutely and only on God the Father – and we often do not follow it. We chock on the words “absolutely” and “only”. We are blind to the sins of self-life, we have great difficulty recognizing them. We like our sinful nature and forget that we must learn to hate it. We are blind to our varied sins of selfishness and pride, including lack of caring and loving, gossip, self-pleasing, self-praise, self-trust, self-dependence, and self-confidence. It is their evil sinfulness we do not want to see, and as a result, we are not in heart-communion with the Father, where we can be broken down before the Lord.  This is about seeing God’s truth and seeing God’s path of deliverance; it is not about condemnation, you are still safe under God’s “NO condemnation” verdict. Take time and meditate with God and be much alone with Him, you need to patiently seek and discover from God the evilness of self-will, self-trust and self-dependence. This revelation is progressive; the heart is prepared for it in stages. The Spirit of God waits for our willingness – which in itself is not continuous, to show us the evil nature and character of self-pleasing, self-trust and self-dependence – existing within us. Going to church, though necessary to a believer, is never enough. You need to be alone in God’s presence. Practice seeking His face in your secret prayer room; you need to heart-commune with God.

The Holy Spirit waits for our willingness and consent to work in us in this area. Our willingness and consent are not continuous, often they are sporadic. Seeing within us the evilness of self-dependence or self-trust leads us into this new brokenness before God. True brokenness only happens when we are in the presence of the Father, in heart-communion with His love. It is our being present and feeling our Father’s loving heart which gently shows us sinfulness of our hidden, inner self to us. Brokenness comes from seeing existing within us (our nature) the evil character of self-trust and self-dependence.

Present yourself to God as alive from the dead and pray saying: “Lord, You have given me this life. You alone can keep it. I bring it to you. I cannot understand everything. I come to You to perfect what You have begun.” To live in Christ, I must keep myself conscious, everyday and every moment I can, that my life has come from God, that Christ IS my life and He alone can live it and maintain it. Verbalize this truth in your heart, and with your mouth. Believe it and declare it to yourself and to Satan: “Christ IS my life.” I do not try to live it, I live Christ by believing, I live Christ by believingly denying and rejecting self-life. The truths of God when believed in, carry the power of God into us, and from us against Satan and his doubts and deceptions. There is a great work to be done in us, greater than we commonly expect. Denying and rejecting sinning and self-life leads our heart to being alone with God to seek a deeper experience and revelation of “Christ IS my life.” I must be broken down in God’s loving presence, in God’s revelation of my sinfulness to me, crying “I am empty, I am nothing, God is all.” This is not a lesson to learn, but a life to receive and live by the Spirit. The Spirit of the Lord prepares our hearts day by day, year after year, patiently and unceasingly, to the glory of God’s Name. Christ is my only life.