Cynthia Christensen
Writing by Cynthia Christensen
Christ is our Life
May today find you keenly aware of His presence within your spirit. You are precious in the Lord and to the body of Christ.
Each of us have a part in His body and that part is vital for the health of the church
(I dedicate this devotion today to a dear brother in the Lord, Clyde Washoe, who has gone on to be with Jesus.)
REVELATION ALERT: Christ IS OUR Life! "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3).
"He must increase, I must decrease." This curious phrase, found in John 3:30, was uttered by John the Baptist upon hearing about the growing ministry of Jesus. Here was a prophet of God who would speak to His people, and move them to repentance, after nearly four hundred yeats of silence. Initially John's ministry was in the foreground as crowds were drawn by his message that prepared them for the coming Messiah. John did not set out to establish a ministry that would draw folks to himself, but one that would ultimately draw men to Jesus, who was shortly to be revealed as the Messiah. But John's disciples saw Jesus' ministry growing, and came to him in a panic because many of the people that followed John were now running after Jesus. John explained how he was a friend of the Bridegroom and not the Bridegroom himself-and now that the bridegroom was here-it was time for him to exit the scene. That's when John said to his disciples, "He must increase, but I must decrease."
As followers of Christ, we too will utter this phrase within our spirit as we learn the secret of Christ as our life. We make way for the Bridegroom to manifest His life in us, each and every day. We die to flesh, even as we recognize certain emotions and thoughts in the soul realm as being part of our experience. We neither fight them nor accept them as coming from our true self-that is to say, who we are at our core. We no longer allow the outer periphery of our lives to dominate us, nor dictate our actions. We die to the realm of the flesh-that realm based in emotion and the five senses-and express the new man-the man of the spirit where we are one with Christ. The periphery of our lives is then dominated by our constant, immovable center, where the Holy Spirit dwells. Here is where we find the foundation for godly reactions and decisions in the realm of our spirit and here is where we find our life hidden in Christ.
The apostle Paul's puts it like this: "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" (Galatians 2:20).
We find that the life of Christ we seek is not "up there" or "out here" but within our very spirits. The deeper we delve into our core, the more of the Spirit we find and the more we see the life of Christ come forth. We do not occupy ourselves with the idea that Jesus is "walking along side" us, but we boldly declare that He is living in us! This prevalent "separated" thinking is what gets us in trouble. If we perceive ourselves as separate from God, then we will find ourselves back under the law which will always leads to sin and death. The sin is not necessarily overt, but is the same sin time and again-and that sin is: the lie of independent self. We must consistently remind ourselves that we are vessels through which either the spirit of error or the Spirit of Truth is manifest. But because we are the Lord's, He who IS Righteousness, Sanctification, and
Redemption, is manifest in and through us and therefore we boast in Him-not ourselves (I Corinthians 1 :30-31).
There is a constant exchange of our weakness for His strength and in this we too can say He is increasing even as we decrease. This does not mean that our personality is swallowed up or that others no longer see "us", but that the "us" they do see, is truly Christ in our form. Just as Paul said in the above verse: "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me ... ".
We who are the Lord's, should be well aware that the war for our souls has come to an end and was settled the moment we accepted Jesus as our Savior. Our focus is now is on His transforming work in our souls and minds, so that we are renewed. We only die to the falsehood that we are independent selves, capable of running our own lives. We surrender to an exchanged life-our weakness for His strength-until we move from being children to become young men, and then
fathers in Christ (1 John 2:12-14). As we mature, we recognize like Paul that we HAVE BEEN crucified with Christ, and that death to self, ends as we move on to claim our new life.
We do not stop at "I die daily" or "dying to self" but go on to seize the ultimate prize which is the resurrected life of Christ in us. As we mature in the Lord, the consciousness of Christ in us, begins to dominate our thinking so that we are able to finally enjoy the life Jesus promised would be abundant (The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly)"! Christ in us becomes our hope of transformation-our hope of glory (Colossians 1 :27). This is how He is increased in us. We get to the point that when we do think of ourselves, we think only of ourselves in terms of who we are in Christ.
When we are confronted by apparent weakness, we do not allow the temporary setback to cause us to forget who we truly are. While situations and circumstances come at us from the periphery, we learn to react from the realm of the spirit to manifest Christ. When Christ is manifest, He manifests as us and so Christ as our life is revealed.
Jesus came to bring us into union with Himself, the Holy Spirit, and the Father. In our union, we find our life, our personality, our identity. As we've studied in the past, this place of our spirit was pictured in the literal temple of the Old Testament. The Old Testament temple (or tabernacle) was made up of three parts: the outer court, the inner court (Holy Place), and the Holy of Holies. This pattern in the Old Testament is a blueprint of God's New Testament plan to occupy a temple "not made with hands" (Acts 7:48), but to dwell in the persons of His saints! The apostle Paul wrote, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). We are now His temple!
The New Testament "outer court" is our bodies, and the inner court or Holy Place is our soul, while the Holy of Holies is now found within our very spirits! This is heavy! As we learn to focus more and more on the spirit of Christ in US, we are drawn into the Holy of Holies where He dwells. We know we can now enter freely into the Holy of Holies because Jesus is our forerunner.
Many of God's people tend to keep their focus on the future coming of the Lord and totally overlook the coming of the Lord which has already taken place-in us! While we do look forward to our Lord's physical return, we must not miss out on the life of Christ that is here and now-
within our very spirits. Jesus said this concerning the Holy Spirit while He was still here on earth:
"He lives WITH you and will be IN you"(John 14:17). He said, "He lives with you" because Jesus was the manifest Person of the Holy Spirit while here on earth but then He said, "and will be IN YOU!" referring to the time when He would ascend to the Father, so that the Father would then be free to send the Holy Spirit to live in each of us who belong to Him. And He sent His Holy Spirit to live in us WITHOUT MEASURE (John 3:34b " ... for God does not give the Spirit by measure"). The same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, dwells in each of us in His fullness: ("But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you" Romans 8:11).
We are no longer occupied with our old self, but now rejoice in the newness of life that is ever present within our spirits where Christ dwells. We have moved on from sin consciousness to Christ consciousness. Now we can go on and be free to be us knowing that we are truly Christ in our form. We are each unique expressions of Him-Christ in us, through us, as us. And what we find is that Christ IS OUR LIFE!