What it means to be a Christian

I believe this is what it means to be a Christian. The life we formerly lived we have sacrificed on the altar of love to the one who gave all. It is no longer I who live … that person we knew as ourselves is dead and gone and behold a new creature is there, in her place. All things have become new. The life we now live is the life of Christ. He lives in us and through us. It is a life of faith no longer living and walking according to the evidence of our eyes, no longer living according to the flesh and the things of the world. The life we live is the expression of the love of Christ as an outflowing communication, the rivers of living water issuing from within yet reaching out to a hurting and dying world. We wear Christ’s heart on our sleeve.

Is this an easy way to live? Yes and No. It is a wonderful way to live but putting the old self on the altar and even more so leaving him there is not so easy but Christ is our strength, our Father our strong tower. The old person isn’t so great but she is familiar and therefore comfortable but that momentary comfort is in exchange for a lifetime of peace and the glory of the Lord. The old is easy and comfortable but it is death, a living death, and not the way of the Lord. Jesus said that he came to give us life (John 10: 10). Why, then, do we persist in continuing our existence through the dead former self when we could be alive to the life in Christ? Is it habit? Is it fear? Is it that we have lacked leadership? Has there been no one to show us the way?

I pray that you allow this life in Christ to fill you up to overflowing so that you fully experience this great miracle of Christ in me, the hope of glory (Col. 1: 27); that His glory will fill your days and your nights, that the glory of his life within you will permeate every cell of your body and that you may know the full breadth of his love and his guidance in every minute of every day. May the glory of the Lord fill you and settle upon you as in days of old so that you are never alone and never out of His presence. This is the hope. This is what Jesus came and died to give us. May the life of Christ within you be fully realized.