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StartingwithGod.com

Where Life Is Found

by Marilyn Adamson, director of EveryStudent.com and StartingwithGod.com

What is your need at the moment?

What comes to mind when I ask that? Finances? Peace in a relationship? Greater personal holiness?

It is easy for our felt needs to take center stage. They occupy our thoughts. Demand our attention.

God can become a distant “hope he comes through” entity.

My soul was refreshed reading a book by Watchman Nee – “Christ–The Sum of All Things Spiritual.” I’d like to share some of it with you.

“Let us see what bread is for the children of God. ‘I am the bread of life.’ Many Christians think of food only in terms of an hour of prayer or an hour of Bible reading; they do not know that their food is the Lord Jesus himself. We are not saying that prayer or Bible reading is useless. But let us remember that the Lord Jesus says here that He is ‘the bread of life.’”

Watchman Nee goes on to say, if Christians look to God for what he can give them, then they are still missing full life. They are focused on things, instead of God himself.

We don’t get sanctification, redemption, power, humility, love as things we possess. We get Christ who is our sanctification, who is our redemption, who is power, who is humility, who is love. Life is found only in him.

Watchman Nee accurately states, “If today I love, it is not because I try my best to love, for the power of love is not in me; but it is because there is One who loves in me. If today I forgive, it is not due to my generosity or effort or ability, it instead is purely due to the One who lives in me and always forgives. Indeed, He is my forgiveness.”

He is the focus. Jesus is the way, the truth, the life. He himself. If I need to know the way, he will guide me. If I need to understand what is true, he will show me. If I am weary, worn out, hopeless, he is my life.

It is a matter of letting Jesus be life in us, letting his life fill us, live through us for others.

I am so glad that it is God himself that is our peace, our joy, our rest. He is there. Not doctrine, not religious rituals, not methods. God is our Rock. Jesus is our Shepherd. The Holy Spirit is our Comforter. Undivided. One God, who is our life.

Let us “…lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith…” Hebrews 12:1,2