This week I was reading S.D. Gordon’s Quiet Talks about Following the Christ. He writes that Jesus “chose to live the dependent life. He recognized that everything He was, and had, and could do, was received from the Father, and could be at its true best only as the Father’s direct touch was upon it.
A friend of mine uses the phrase “Christ in me” as he describes his walk with God. How often do I live dependently upon Christ in my own life? Are there areas in my life that I am holding back? Do I depend on me instead of God? Do I have some secret areas in my life that I fail to acknowledge? Am I even aware of them?
This weekend I asked the people in the adult bible fellowship to think about and pray Pslam 139: 23-24.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;
Try me, and know my anxieties;
24 And see if there is any wicked way in me,
And lead me in the way everlasting.
I asked, “When was the last time you asked God to search you? When was the last time you were really honest with God?”
In order to have my will conformed to God’s will, the first step is honesty. Honesty with God, honesty in my own life and honesty in my relationships.
With God’s help, I will learn to become more and more dependent on him.
I always liked that 5th verse of 2nd Corinthians, chapter 13: “Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith; prove you own selves. Know ye not your own selves that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?” It’s also a verse that supports one of my other beliefs: the difference between being “apostate” and being “reprobate” is, indeed, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, that latter state defining an man to have once been re-instated thru Christ with that connection unto the Father, the former meaning only that a man has backslid to a point of no communion with the Holy Ghost who yet resides within….