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Followers of Christ discover
personal abundance
when they regularly encounter
Christ,
experience personal transformation,
and
share in His mission.
They intentionally integrate
"with Christ, like Christ, and
for Christ."
For
Him
Living for Christ -- sharing His
mission and responding to His
leading -- forms the third leg
on the stool of spiritual formation. To live for Him
is to no longer live for myself.
It sounds simple, but a life yielded to
His leading and a heart that forsakes its own
preferences does not seem to come easily. And those
moments of total submission, when they do arrive, prove
difficult to sustain.
The Apostle Paul declared, "I have been
crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20) That's living
for Christ. Not teeth-gritting determination. Not
extraordinary reserves of self-discipline. Not Type-A
drivenness. Not the over-achiever over-achieving. But
death. Simply dead to ourselves and alive to
Christ.
Living for Christ, understood in these
terms, naturally involves His Presence (with Christ) and
our transformation (like Christ). If "living
for Christ" really means "Christ living through me"
then I am not a worker on His behalf but a conduit in
His hands. That's the paradigm shift that needs to
happen.
Perhaps the struggle so many of us have
in living for Christ -- devoted to His cause, responding
to His leading, "walking by the Spirit" -- is that we
continue to live for ourselves. With but one life to
live and no constant conscious crucifixion ("I die
daily") our own cause triumphs.
Living for Christ involves less
straining and striving then we might imagine. It emerges
from surrender and trust. The Kingdom of God is not
advanced by the brilliant and the bold but by the broken
-- those whose own will, agenda, ambition, pride, and
plans have been broken.
The life lived authentically for Christ
is a life Christ lives through us.
Have you died to
yourself today? Died to your own aspirations, dreams,
hurts, worries, and fears? Until we do, we cannot be alive
fully to Christ nor can He live fully through
us.
Our abundance springs from these three short phrases: "With Christ,
like Christ, and for Christ."
In HOPE --
David |
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