Barney Wiget's Blog, page 53

Acquiring A Quiet Soul (Part 1 of 3)

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My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, put your hope in the Lord both now and forevermore. Psalm 131

EAVESDROP WITH ME on this rich conversation David has with God. It’s one of a collection of fifteen Psalms that I call “Poems for Pilgrims.” If you look in your Bible you’ll notice the titles of Psalms 120 to 134 are called “Songs of Ascent” or something of that sort. These are special songs every observant Jew sang on their ascent up to Jerusalem every year on their ceremonially required feast days. This song reminded them to be childlike instead of childish or churlish on their pilgrimage.

For us, this particular tiny chorus points way beyond Jewish religious regimen and highlights the indispensable virtues of humility and childlikeness required of pilgrims on our journey toward spiritual maturity.

Of this poem the great Charles Spurgeon said, “This is one of the shortest Psalms to read, but one of the longest to learn.” Evolving from childish to childlike in our faith is not easy, albeit not impossible.

I was an incorrigibly spoiled kid. I acted as though I was the earth’s axis. The world was in the movie in which I starred. I expected to be catered to and through a tantrum until I got what I wanted. It’s taken me over forty years to be willing to play a supportive role. It’s still my movie.

Since my soul has neither been particularly calm or quiet lately I’ve been using these Spirit-inspired words of David for meditation purposes a lot. It’s not that I find surrender difficult, it’s staying surrendered that is problematic for me. Repeating the Psalm and meditating on each part helps reinforce my confidence in God and provides a measure of spiritual sanity that results from coming to him with a “stilled” soul.

It begins with a humility that reminds us that we have a very limited capacity to run the universe.

My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.

Childlike pilgrims stay out of God’s chair! They’re not so arrogant as to presume to help God run his world.

C.S. Lewis dubbed pride as “The Great Sin.” “There are two kinds of people in the world, the proud who think they’re humble and the humble who think they’re proud.” Everyone has this same weed growing inside that cannibalizes any good in its path. Killing it is difficult and even harder to get it to stay dead.

Read about what it means to be Conceited 

It’s arrogant to think we can figure out all of life’s “great matters.” Elsewhere the psalmist confessed, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.” (Psalm 139:6)

In order to advance toward our goal, serious spiritual pilgrims are relentless in their battle against the spirit of entitlement that says: “I deserve answers to all my questions, to know what’s going on all the time on my pilgrimage. I require explanations for all my difficulties along the way. Everything has to fit inside my previously approved categories. God owes me explanations for the way he goes about things.”

Pride!

I wonder why some people came to Jesus to begin with. Did they come for bread or for the Bread of Life? Do they serve a sovereign God or demand a “servant god”?

Childlike Pilgrims don’t concern themselves with “great matters or things too wonderful for them.” They leave the management of the universe to God. Doing this quiets and calms their soul.

We’ll look at that next time…

In the meantime, I recommend one or both of these books that might help you lean into your spiritual pilgrimage:

The Other End of the Dark: A Memoir About Divorce, Cancer, and Things God Does Anyway
Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends

Finally, evangelical leaders speak out on the president’s sexual mores and lies!

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Franklin Graham, president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and of Samaritan’s Purse, an international Christian relief organization said, if a president “will lie to, or mislead, his wife … what will prevent him from doing the same to the American public?”

Gary Bauer, former president of the Family Research Council, Republican presidential candidate in 2000, now president of American Values, a non-profit organization committed to defending life, traditional marriage, and equipping our children with conservative values reported his distress about the scandal dominating the headlines: “I walk around my home with the TV remote in my hand for fear that [my children] will come in the room when a story about the president comes on. [Thanks to the president] our kids have been taught that fidelity is old-fashioned, that adultery is the norm.”

Focus on the Family founder Jim Dobson lamented, “As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible. In the Book of James, the question is posed, ‘Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring” (James 3:11 NIV). The answer is no.”

It’s about time these great spiritual leaders came to their senses and communicated their moral outrage against the president for his philandering and lying ways!

Oh wait. These men made these comments twenty years ago about then Democratic President Clinton and his philandering and lying ways! Oops!

FYI, all three of them are avid supporters of our present president in spite of his unbridled libido and shameless and unrepentant trash mouth. Double oops!

I guess party politics does play a teensy role in what some people choose to be outraged about. It begs the question:

How much do some so-called Christians actually care about biblical morals when they can so easily dismiss them when it’s their guy in the office philandering and lying?

As much as it pains me to out fellow believers, “Judgment begins in the house of God.” (1 Peter 4:17)

Once again embarrassed by association.

Mature Christians Live Into What They Know

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“Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”

After many weeks we’re now concluding our comments on this passage and I hope it’s clear by now that we’ve arrived at the conclusion that there is no arrival and no conclusion for the maturation of us who follow Jesus. Paul is clear on this point:

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on … I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do…

On the matter of maturity we must conclude our thoughts––for now. But what’s this footnote that Paul inserts at the end of some of the deepest thoughts ever written on spiritual depth?

“Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”

For six verses he’d been describing the godly mature as ones who strive for a deeper revelation of Christ, a revelation that includes suffering, dying like he died, soaking in his resurrection power, and leaning into the Creator’s eternal purpose. These people, Paul says, are aware that they haven’t arrived at any sort of pinnacle of spiritual attainment but are constantly in the hunt for a profounder experience with God. Yet, in case we get the wrong idea of maturity he tells us to “live up to what we have already attained,” walk in the truth we already have.

Though we strain forward for the prize of knowing him in a deeper way, we don’t fail to live up to the revelation we already have. For all our seeking and striving for a profounder place in Jesus, maturity dictates that we seek and strive to live up to what we’ve already experienced. We have to be vigilant about not letting our vigilance for going forward that we strive right past the lifestyle and purpose God requires of us in the present.

Radical pursuit for a deeper spiritual experience apart from living practically and responsibly in what we already know is not God’s definition of maturity. It’s not either/or, but both.

Some people succeed in dazzling us with their supposed spiritual fervor but God remains unimpressed. Give me tarnished limping lovers of God daily inching their way toward the prize of perceiving and pleasing Christ over self-indulgent spiritual superstars any day.

Pressing toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward has to be coupled with living our earth-ward lives responsibly. Never stop seeking deeper revelation but live in the revelation you already have. It’s a siloed spirituality that separates spiritual passion from moral purity. One cannot exist without the other.

This is the 9th and final post on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down for earlier ones on this passage and theme.

Of course, one component to “living up to what we’ve already attained” is to help others to attain to mature faith in Jesus. This book might help you do that!

Mature Christians Dig for Deeper Revelation

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“If on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.”

It’s not like he was saying, “If you disagree with me, God’ll show you!” I don’t get from Paul that it was his way or the highway. He just knew that the way to follow Christ in a mature way is the way he prescribes here. He knew that the only way to know and experience Christ requires knowing him in the power of his resurrection, through participating in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and pressing on to the goal to win the prize for which God calls us heavenward.

He knew there was no alternate path to Christian maturity, no viable way to swap the narrow way for an easy way.

In the very next verse he says, “Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do.” I’ve always taken this and what he said in another place, “Follow me as I follow Christ” to mean: Follow me insofar as I follow him; i.e., Follow me only when I’m following him and if I stop following him, you should stop following me.) 

The spirit of his prescription here is: If you don’t agree with me about the mature journey toward Christlikeness and the deepest experience of God, don’t take my word for it, go to God!

That’s what mature Christians do. They don’t just take others’ word for it (including their pastor or spiritual mentor). They don’t just parrot what they’ve been told. They go to God to find out what he requires of them. They listen to the Spirit on how to think and act in such a way as to reflect a mature faith.

“These are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit,” says Paul elsewhere. “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.”  Daniel, also a man of considerable spiritual depth, said, “He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning. He reveals deep and hidden things.” 

“If on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.” This is too important for you to dismiss off-hand. If we want to be mature followers of Jesus we have to go to God and find out for ourselves how to get there. Don’t take my word for it, even Paul’s, go to God and get a revelation.

It makes me sad that so many Christians live on the original saving revelation that they got when they first came to Jesus. They’ve lived at that surface level Christianity ever since then as though that’s all there is. But, sisters and brothers, your initial salvation is just the foyer to the mansion that Jesus paid for and put in your name. Explore the rest of the house. It’s too vast to plumb all its depths in this life, but try anyway! And…

“If on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.”

This is the 8th of 10ish posts on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down for earlier posts on this passage.

Pre-christians see right through the shallow spirituality that they see in many so-called Christians and don’t want any part of it. If not for your own sake, for the sake of your friends and neighbors, I adjure you to go deeper in Jesus. Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends is my recently published book on sharing a credible and relevant faith with others. Check it out.

Mature Christians Renounce Barren Religion

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“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead…”

Spirituality wears many disguises. It’s best one is “religion.” Pharisees are the same yesterday, today, and forever. They can imitate spiritual depth with the best of them. They appear to doggedly press into the heart of things, when they are actually just working to impress their audience. Theirs is a selective spirituality, which selects the surface over the center every time.

This “forgetting what is behind” phrase is typically taken to refer to our own past mistakes or to the wounds inflicted on us by others. While I highly recommend that we do “forget” those things in favor of a better future, that’s not really what Paul had in mind here.

He had just listed his former zealous legalistic Phariseeism and religious pedigree. Now, since the Damascus Road, he recognized that in order to be a mature Christ follower, he had to swear off barren religion. He wasn’t talking about giving up his sinful past or about forgiving those who had hurt him. He was making the point that in order to “take hold of that for which Christ had taken hold of him” he had to forget the way his religion taught him to strive in his own strength.

By “religion” I mean a human-generated system to assuage guilt, win the favor of God, and impress people. Understood in this way religion can’t save, sanctify, or facilitate intimacy with God. In fact, as a method of achieving intimacy with God, religion is immature and ineffective. It drives us in the opposite direction.

Had he not pointed this out we might have misinterpreted all this talk about attaining, obtaining, pressing on, taking hold, and straining toward the goal to refer to the “Try Harder” method of Christian living.

In another place, Paul asks, “How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?”  Again, “These rules may seem wise because they require strong devotion, pious self-denial, and severe bodily discipline. But they provide no help in conquering a person’s evil desires.”

This sort of religion therefore is not simply helpless, it’s harmful, because it lulls you to sleep and prevents you from pressing on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called you heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Religion is devious in that it deludes us into thinking that it’s good for us when all it’s doing is making us feel good about ourselves at the expense of a truer connection with God. It lacks the empowering grace of God, and can sometimes lead us to utter “dis-grace.”

“Those who make religion their God will not have God for their religion.” Thomas Erskine

Religion reminds me of the story about the attorney on the first day in his brand new office. (It doesn’t have to be a lawyer, but it’s more fun to bash lawyers.) He sees a potential client walk in the door, and since he wants to look busy he picks up the phone. “Look Harry, about that amalgamation deal. I think I should run down to the factory and handle it personally… No, I don’t think $3 million will do it… OK. Call you later.” He looks up at the visitor and says, “Good morning, how may I help you?”

“You can’t help me at all,” the man says. “I’m just here to hook up your phone.”

Jesus told those who “prophesied, did miracles, and drove out demons in his name,” “I never knew you,” that is, I never knew the real you, because you never divulged it. You masked it with religion.

I think I hear the Spirit saying: Take off your mask! Forget your former methods of trying to impress. In the profoundest way possible I want to know you and I want you to know me!

This is the 7th of 10ish posts on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down for earlier ones.

If “religion” is bad for us, it’s also bad for others. We want to lead people to the real Jesus. For help in that direction read Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends.

Mature Christians Routinely Press Into Unknown Territory

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“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”

Paul bursts out in these few verses to the Philippians with talk about attaining, obtaining, pressing on, taking hold, and straining toward the goal. The mature Christian realizes and freely admits s/he falls an entire cargo trainload short of perfection. It’s the immature that are afflicted with a condition I call “the delusion of arrival.” They conned themselves into thinking they’ve arrived and have no place to go from there. How boring is that! Friends, you and I have a LOOOONG way to go to know and love our God in the way he deserves.

Though arrival at the goal is not achievable in this life, it is the most prominent target for the mature. I say, “Shoot for the moon, and if you hit the trees, at least you got off the ground!” Brian Zahnd says, “Truth is not a laminated card your carry in your pocket. Truth is a long hard road and you have to walk it.” That’s where the attaining, obtaining, pressing on, taking hold, and straining toward come in.

I’m not talking about a version of spirituality that’s more sweaty than spiritual. That version that is more about us forcing our flesh to try to emulate Jesus. Such an approach is neither mature nor Christ-honoring, to say nothing of it being conceited and futile.

Paul’s prescribes that we proceed in the pursuit of all that Jesus purchased for us empowered by grace. Maturity involves a tricky balance between grace and discipline. We can’t do God’s job and he won’t do ours. Our part is primarily co-operative.

In another place, Paul describes his own practice of cooperating with grace: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” (1 Corinthians 15:10)

The Lord brings to the table the power we need and we bring the “want.” That’s how this passage begins, “I want to know Christ.” And this is no casual desire of simply “staying saved” as any Christians seem to display. No, it’s an insatiable craving to know him. This is no side-dish wish, but the main course of the mature. There’s nothing more important than to have a longing to know and honor God in the deepest and profoundest way possible.

“The average Christian,” says A.W. Tozer, “is so cold and so contented with his wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in with satisfying fullness.” Jeanne Guyon called it a “fervor of holy desire.”

In his poem, “The Way of Perfection,” William Faber put it this way:

‘Tis not enough to save our souls,

To shun the eternal fires;

The thought of God will rouse the heart

To more sublime desires.

Those “sublime desires” to know the eternal God in an ever-increasing deeper way are at the core of what it means to be a mature Christian.

This is the 6th of 10ish posts on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down to earlier ones if you missed them.

Someone reviewed Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends thusly:

“Absolutely love this book! I sat down with a highlighter to mark pages I wanted to reread and this book touched my heart and will be so resourceful in reaching the many lost people I care about and the ones I haven’t even met yet on “His quest to find friends on the margins, the outermost circle of society, the poor, downtrodden, and vulnerable…”

I Need Your Help!

 

As you can see, I’ve just published a new book called Reaching Rahab and I need your help to get the word out. I wrote it for an audience to include, but exceed, my own immediate sphere of friends and family in order to inspire Christians of all types to influence others toward Jesus. Wouldn’t it be great if this year more of God’s friends helped more people become his friends than ever before?! Thus, my need for your help to get the word out.

I’m asking you to do one or more of the following after reading the book––which I hope you’ll do soon:

•  Review the book on Amazon (and Goodreads if you’re on it). Reviews really help!

•  Share it on your Facebook, Twitter, and/or email lists (Feel free to use or adapt something like this: If you’re wanting to share Jesus with more people more naturally and effectively this year, this book is for you!)

•  Buy more than one book, and give them out to friends… And ask them to do the same…

•  Give one to your pastor and/or small group leader. Ask them to consider using it as a curriculum in your church’s small groups. Tell them that I guarantee it will have positive effect on the promoting a spirit of grace-filled evangelism in the church. (Well, maybe “guarantee” is a little strong, but I believe it will make a significant difference.)

•  If you lead a small group, please pray about using the book in the next season. There’s a Discussion and Action Guide in the back for just that purpose.

•  I’m having a couple of book launch events. If you live in or near Santa Cruz or San Francisco please come and bring a friend or ten:

     ∞March 11 (Sunday) 6pm, Hope Church, 4525 Soquel Drive, Soquel       ∞March 24 (Saturday) 6pm, Dolores Park Church, 455 Dolores St,             San Francisco. 

Since I didn’t have the resources for an agent or traditional publisher I’m asking you to be my publicists. The pay isn’t great, but hopefully the knowledge that you might help some people help some other people come to Jesus, will suffice.

PS: Half of the profits go to YWAM San Francisco. So, if nothing else, that great ministry in the Tenderloin will benefit from the sale of many books!

Thanks in advance from the bottom of my heart!

Mature Christians Die Like Jesus Died

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“…becoming like him in his death” 

You can’t be resurrected without dying first. Death comes before resurrection. The order cannot be reversed. New life only comes after dying to the old life. If you want to know the power of Jesus’ resurrection you have to become like him in his death. It’s only those who die that are candidates for new birth.

If you want to come to Jesus you have to die to your sin, to your plans, and to your ways of doing things. On his way to kill Christians, Paul’s plans changed when he died. “I’ve been crucified with Christ” he wrote later.

But this thing about “becoming like him in his death” insinuates something even more than this. If we ask ourselves how Jesus died we might come nearer its meaning. How was it that God the Son came to the cross to begin with? They didn’t take his life. He gave it freely. What did it take for him to do such a thing?

We’re told he “humbled himself and became obedient to death” (Philippians 2), that is, he unselfishly submitted to the beating and crucifying. He could have summoned thousands of angelic beings to prevent it; instead he lay down the prerogative to power and meekly surrendered himself to his crucifiers. I we’re to become like him in his death that same spirit of meekness will be required of us.

Aren’t you just dying to be like Jesus? It will take “offering our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” (Romans 12:1). In other words we have to die right like Jesus did. Those at the foot of his cross, believers and skeptics alike, had a front row seat to the right way to die––in surrender and humility.

Don’t misunderstand me; it’s not that Jesus was anxious to experience the brutality of crucifixion. “Let this cup pass from me!” he cried in the garden. But it didn’t take long for him to acquiesce, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” “Nevertheless”––what a sweet word!

It was “for the joy set before him”––i.e., the redemptive result of the sacrifice––that gave him the will to endure it (Hebrews 12:2). Taking the long view, he was willing to submit to the Father’s better will.

Mature Christians die like Jesus did. They die in the same spirit as he died. They die to their own will, to their short-term preferences. They’re willing to die for the sake of something greater. They admit to wishing the cup of suffering to pass them by. They prefer a much easier cup but they take the longer view and submit to the better will of the Father.

We can only begin to imagine the humility it took for Jesus to let his own creatures arrest, abuse, and assassinate him. But imagine we must if we’re to “become like him in his death.” Maturity is getting not what our flesh wants but what our spirit needs in order to find itself. “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” And it requires the Jesus sort of humility to die so unfairly.

It doesn’t take strength to pick up our cross and carry it; it takes humble submission to God’s better way. Jesus was “crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God’s power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God’s power we will live with him in our dealing with you.” (2 Corinthians 13:4)

The mature are “weak” enough to go to the cross for the assassination of their flesh. Contrary to populist Christianity, maturity is not being strong enough to get what you want, but being weak enough to die to what you want so you can have what God wants instead.

This is the 5th of 10ish posts on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down for earlier ones.

Someone said of Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends––“The world is full of “Rahabs” waiting for God’s spies to do their part. Barney’s book will help them get there without all the gobbledegook of religious methodologies. Go spies! Now available in both print and eBook formats.

Mature Christians Join Jesus In His Suffering

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“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings”

So, the experience of resurrection, that we spoke about in the last post, comes with a price, a huge price. It’s called the cross. Remember how Jesus beckoned us to take up our own cross and follow him?

“What are we supposed to do with the cross once we pick it up?”

“You carry it.”

“Carry it where? Am I dropping it off somewhere, delivering it to someone?”

“Not so much. No. You carry it to a place called ‘The Skull.’”

“Okay. Then what?”

“They nail you to it and you hang there till you die.”

“That sounds painful.”

“You might say that. Yes.”

That’s what people do on crosses. They die. Evidently the Christian life is not for the faint of heart. There’s a cross with your name on it and one with mine. There’s suffering involved in following Jesus.

It inevitably entails suffering for Jesus, but the kind of suffering Paul seems to be referring to here is a kind of suffering that we do with Jesus, a “participation in his sufferings.” Other versions call it a “fellowship of his sufferings.” He’s inviting us into an intimate fellowship with the greatest Sufferer in history. Of course, we thank Jesus everyday for suffering for us, but it’s here that he bids us to suffer alongside him, to feel some of what he feels for his broken world. It’s here that he brings us closer to the heart of the God who still suffers with and for his world.

David vented “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Centuries later Jesus belted out those same words from his cross. It seems that David, in his own sufferings, experienced a sliver of the agony that Jesus would experience in the future, without which he could not have written his prophetic words. So David, in his own experience of a sort of prequel to Jesus’ agony, not only predicted the sufferings of the Lord, he also participated in it. And who could know Jesus’ heartbeat better than the one known in his day as the man “after God’s own heart”?

In the same way, the afflictions we experience today invite us not only to bring those afflictions to Jesus for healing and comfort, but to sidle up close to him so we can feel what he felt on his cross. To say nothing of what he continues to feel as he grieves over the people he loves that refuse to love him in return. As we experience the sequel of Jesus’ agony (versus David’s prequel), we are welcomed to the table of his exquisite fellowship.

This richer intimacy with Jesus is a superlative perk of our suffering in this world. This path to fellowship with him may not exactly be what you thought you were signing up for when you said, “Yes!” to him. But, if you’ll travel it, I guarantee it will yield a depth of intimacy with him that nothing else can.

This is the 4th of 10ish posts on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down to  earlier ones if you missed them.

Have you gotten your copy of Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends yet? What are you waiting for? My friend, Tim Svoboda, San Francisco Bay Area Coordinator for YWAM said about the book “This is practical and down to earth on how we can be lovers of people leading them to love God with us.”

If you want to share Christ with people in a more down to earth way, consider the book as a place to begin.

Mature Christians Want Resurrection Power in their Lives

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“… to know the power of his resurrection…”

“Jesus insisted that people could not live at the circumference unless they were alive at the center. The modern attempt is to have quantity of life at the circumference regardless of quality of life at the center. Jesus knew this would end in futility and cynicism and utter shallowness.” E. Stanley Jones

I don’t know how Paul could’ve described a mature union with God more deeply than he did in Philippians 3:10-16. Even David, the Hebrew Bible’s consummate fellowshipper with God, couldn’t have reached down this deep, for the obvious reason that Jesus hadn’t yet come, died, and been raised. Israel’s minstrel had no way of conceiving of the “power of the resurrection.” The best he could do was to refer to it a time or two, by way of prophetic imagination, in his musical diary. What we know as history remained for him a veiled mystery.

Let’s be clear that “knowing him in the power of the resurrection” is something immeasurably more than knowing about him and his power. Anyone who can read or hear the story can know about it. But the power that Paul pined for, along with every mature Christian since, is the life-laced enablement of Jesus inside us. We yearn for the dynamic that transforms our internal ugliness to his beauty, from our self-indulgent ways to finding our center and purpose in him. It’s Jesus inside us living his life through us that we can’t live without.

Let’s also be clear that knowing this power experientially takes supernatural revelation. Paul prayed:

18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms… (Ephesians 1)

The same power that raised Jesus is the very power that we rely on and have unlimited access to in order to live like him. Somebody ought to say “AMEN!” right about now!

It’s one thing to believe in the reality of the resurrection and another thing to possess and depend on that same power surging through our spiritual veins. Knowing the chemical composition and nutritional benefits of spinach and actually eating it are two different things. Knowing Jesus in the power of his resurrection is digesting him and living in his strength. Jesus said:

“In the same way that the fully alive Father sent me here and I live because of him, so the one who makes a meal of me lives because of me.” (John 6:57–The Message)

This is how dependent mature Christians are on the live-Savior in their quest to be like him, drawing on the full benefits of having the risen Jesus in them.

This is the 3rd of 10ish posts on How Mature Christians Act. Scroll down for earlier ones.

Reaching Rahab: Joining God In His Quest For Friends is now available on Amazon in both print and eBook formats! Get one and share it with a friend!