Awake from Sleep

When we are born again, we should have seen some amazing changes occurring in our lives. We started out a rank sinner, then we came to Christ. It's as though, the day that we got saved, we woke up a miserable wretch and somewhere in the midst of that very day God smiled upon us and we went to bed a New Creature. This is the initial Salvation experience. We should then find ourselves enjoying tastes that we never enjoyed, we should see colors we never noticed before, our life has become more meaningful, our day is less about us and more about the One Whom has saved us. These are great observations, but dearly Beloved, this is not ALL that has occurred in your Christian walk.

There are ups and downs, test and trials that occur along the way. There are days that you feel like you are God's highly favored child, and others that you wonder if He really exists despite the miracle in salvation that you have experienced. All are good and natural reactions to such changes and challenges in life.

The title of this blog is one that should have been prefaced with more explanation, for the reader may be thinking that the subject is about our initial salvation experience and not so much about our walk with Christ on a daily basis. Life as a Christian can become very confusing, but fortunately we have the answers readily available to us to help in our time of need.

In observing church people for years, I have noticed several different approaches to the Christian life. Some are saved, go to bed that night and arise the next morning and every morning after that exactly the same as they were the day that they got saved. (I doubt the salvation of such folks, for He changes lives and we are to never be the same after an encounter with the One that invented intimacy)! Then there are those that instantly go to work for the Lord, making every effort to earn what was given to them freely, (these go in the category of "miserably saved"), for in all their working and toiling they have forsaken the rest Christ paid for. Lastly, there are the precious few that are changed forever from that the moment they receive Christ, ever resting and growing in Him and His Likeness daily, while trusting Him to provide their needs, knowing He has atoned for their sins (past, present, and future), and are perfumed with His Love.

Of the first mentioned, I've never been. However the second group I was accustomed to and actually lived for many years, always failing and never satisfied with my daily conduct while sharing with others that there was somehow hope in the work we could produce to please our Dear Savior. But when I made it to the end of myself, I was faced to meet the blood sacrifice of my Beloved and found that "in Him" existed everything that I could ever need or dare to present to a Holy and Just God.

i never saw myself as God saw me. My daily life was an endless circle of wake up, fail, repent, fail fail, repent, plead and cry, repent, fail fail fail, want to die and kill myself, hopelessness, fail fail fail fail, and so on....

I knew there HAD to be more Jesus died for than this, for I was realizing that there should be more victory to experience, although I thought that the victory would only come by my right living. When God finally showed me that it wasn't in my behavior, but in the fact that I one day years ago had received Him into my heart as my Lord and Savior, I began to realize that what He saw when He looked at me wasn't me at all. It wasn't even me covered in His Blood as I had pictured, for He is the "Lamb that TAKES AWAY the sin of the world," not the one who covers it up...that's what bulls and goats were for in the Old Covenant. I had to receive the fact that when I received Him in my heart, I died. I died and He became the one alive IN ME.

One way to know if you are saved is if you are horrified by your own sin. If you've received Christ and you are carrying around the weight of your own failures, you are saved, you are just miserably saved. We can't earn what Christ did for us, we have to simply believe that what He has done is enough. Once we are able to see that He did it all and we grasp what all was accomplished in that Heavenly Transaction, while also seeing ourselves how God see us, which is perfect and in His Son then we are better equipped to live a life victoriously in Christ.

Paul's message was constantly to edify the church and to continue to explain to them who they are In Christ, that they might not have the focus on themselves, but rather on the answer to themselves.

King David said, "As for me, I will behold Your face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Your Likeness." If David could look to the One that He would later be in, the same One in Whom we ARE IN, then He could picture himself to look like the Christ to come. Christ has come into our lives and hearts, and the more we seem that we are Alive unto Him, and seen by God in His Image and not in our own sinful image, the sooner we will have the victory over our sin. We're not advocating that it is a matter of imagining yourself in a way that we are not, but rather that we would grow to KNOW that we are DEAD and He is ALIVE, bringing us along for the ride. We'll talk more about this in blogs to come.....