A very special day at our home

 

Colossians 1:27

August 27 is a very special day at our home, because on that day some forty-five years ago Jan and I entered into covenant relationship.  We became roomies, and our goal was to become one. The Black preacher said this about becoming one, in that truth lie some good news and some bad.  It is not that we are not going to become one, but which one.  Let me just say that after a year or two it became apparent that we only had one choice.

The apostle Paul is referring to a mystery, “which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”  That might just take your breath away; Jesus the one Paul referred earlier as, the invisible God, the first born of all creation.  He goes on to say that he created all things, in heaven and earth, visible and invisible.  That He is before all things and in him, all things hold together.  When you by faith received what God himself gave you, acted on that faith, and asks Jesus Christ to be your Savior and Lord, and then Jesus enters into you.

Something amazing happens at that moment, at that very moment you were freed from condemnation, sin was paid for, and you were a new creation in Christ.  The old man the Bible talks about die to you, and Christ became your life.  Those all happened the moment you received Christ, and yet it may take you years to come to some understanding of those truths. 

In John 14:18-20, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me.  Because I live, you also will live.  In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”   In John 17:22-23, is often called the “High Priestly Prayer” “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me.”  Yes, my dear sister and brother in Christ, Jesus came to indwell us, the apostle Paul states in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

God living inside of me, but so often, my thoughts and even my actions do not reflect that to be true, what is wrong with me?  If we jump ahead in our reading to Colossians 2:20, we find the answer, “Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules.”  It gets real simple at this point, I choose my desires, I choose to live independent of God’s authority, or I choose to not believe what God has stated in His written word; the Bible.  I buy into church programs fostered in the minds of men, instead of abiding in a relationship with Jesus Christ.  In Galatians 3:3, Paul asked this question; “Are you so foolish?  Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice