By Major W. Ian Thomas
This will close the book. Hope that it has been a blessing to all and maybe help clear up any misgivings or lack of understanding.
Perhaps you are a businessman and you imagine that once you have entered your office you have become the boss. Everything you say now becomes law! You had better repent by giving this business over to God. The resources are not yours anyway. Everything belongs to Him. And, if you are someone who works in an environment where the Spirit cannot remain in control of your life, then you need to get out of that business before it becomes too late to enter into the Kingdom-Life of God. (Matt. 22:1-14)
In what part of your life do you seem to get by without depending on God {not God as a “come along helper” to your plans and desires, as so many ask Him to do, but God as the “originator” and “source” of your plans, activities and desires}? That is the place that needs to change! Right there! You had better repent. You cannot find the Kingdom-Life until you have stopped walking in the strength of the flesh.
Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His Rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it… For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works… Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest… (Heb. 4:1, 10-11 Emphasis added, for further enlightenment look at our other blog link in the left hand top side of this page)
You have been “made alive” in Christ to be exclusively at His disposal. You now need to fully present yourself to Him to be an instrument of His Righteousness, so He may control your activities and display the Light of His Life through your character. Can you honestly say in your own experience, “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 {in a mortal body} I live by faith in the Son of God”? (Gal. 2:20 Emphasis added)
The Capital “I” needs to be crucified with Christ so that God may have complete possession of your body. The degree to which a deliberate, voluntary attitude of faith has permitted you to reckon yourself to be dead “with Christ,” and the degree to which you have stopped living by “the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Eph. 2:3), will be the degree to which the redemptive plan of God has taken place within your life.
Your worth is directly related to how much you have permitted the Spirit of God to reveal the Son’s Life through you. Everything else is a dead loss and comes in last place or quits or falls out of the race set before us. In the end, everything of the flesh must be burned in the testing fires on the Day of Judgment.
When you are willing to fully surrender your body to become a vessel of Christ’s Kingdom-Life, then the Son of God will fill what you are – nothing, with what He is – everything. Only then will you be something!
With the old flesh-life out, and the Kingdom-Life of Christ in, how wealthy God will have made you! This is the Pearl of Great Price! Good friend, before you lay this book aside, embrace this life of faith. Great and precious are the promises to those who live by childlike dependence on God for everything. (2 Pet. 1:3-4) Submit yourself to Christ so that He may give you all that He has prepared for you in the Heavenly realms. (Eph. 1:3) He waits to share this wonderful Mystery of Godliness with you!
{We therefore} present to you the word of God in its fullness – the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. (Col. 1:25-28)
But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing… Blessed is the man who endures temptation {in the time of testing}; for when he has been approved {to come out of the wilderness of human sufficiency}, he will receive the crown of Life {the Kingdom-Life} which the Lord has promised
to those who love Him. (Jam. 1:4, 12 Emphasis added)
We have come through this by personal experience and have stood the testings, trials and tribulations and still they come as the LORD perfects us with His teaching and revealing of our Salvation within. All to the Glory and Praise of an Endless Life in the presence of God. Even while here on earth in our present state as a receptive creature of God's making.
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