I'm studying one of my all-time favorite works with my men's group: True Spirituality, by Francis Schaeffer. This week we are in Chapter 4--In the Spirit's Power.
What Schaeffer writes about in this chapter is what Oak Mtn is ALL about! When we talk about the Waltz (the Three Step Dance with Christ--Repent! Believe! Fight!...see other Blog Posts on the Waltz), we are really talking about the HOW of the Spirit-filled life. The terms are interchangeable.
Whether you go to John 15 and read about Abiding in Christ; or you go to Romans 8 and read about the Spirit-filled life; Or whether you go to Numbers 21 and read about Looking to Christ in faith...they are ALL the same thing as the WALTZ. We are talking about the Christian life as it is meant to be lived...the Christian life where the primary issue is continued FAITH in Christ...
The reason many believers and churches have lost their first love and have grown stale is because what began as a life of faith has morphed into a life of performance and moralism. True Spirituality is God, through the Spirit, raising the dead in us on a daily basis as we go to Him in repentance and faith. We become aware of sin, we go honestly, humbly, helplessly to Christ and we trust the Blood of Christ to crucify us to that sin...we trust the power of the Spirit to mortify/crucify/kill that sin in us.
As Schaeffer puts it, We ARE BEING "Transfigured" on a daily basis by faith~ It's not make-believe...it is grounded in the time and space in which we live!
True Spirituality is NOT picking ourselves up by our own bootstraps...it is entering into the Promised Land of the Gospel by appropriating land that is ours, but must be taken by faith! We are changed the same way we were converted...by looking to Christ and the promises of the Gospel to do for us and in us what we can not do ourselves...
We can no more change ourselves than Mary could produce the Child of Promise in her own womb...our only recourse is to believe the promises the EXACT SAME way Mary did (Luke 1:38)...and the SAME CHRIST will be formed within us...not in a womb given to men, but in our hearts!!
WOW! WOW! WOW! If you're not smiling right now...check your pulse...you may be dead!
1 comment:
I am smiling!@!
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