Galatians 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
I was talking to a friend today who is struggling with her faith. She knows she needs that relationship God craves to share with us, but she says she just can't get to the point that she can surrender it all to Him. As we texted back and forth and I planned out each text with the perfect syntax and verbage, I began noticing that God was revealing Himself to me at the same time I was showing her what I already inherently knew.
It was a realization of things that I have been learning in the past weeks and month, something that is so totally and utterly crucial to our faith, and yet so easily overlooked or misunderstood. I told her that our walk is like an intimate relationship we share (nothing new there), and that if we want to grow closer to our Savior we have to invest time and effort into the relationship (also very unoriginal). But the next statement that flowed from my fingers shocked even me...
When we die to sin, when we admit our fault and our guilt and the fact that our depravity goes so deep to our core that we cannot escape it of our own accord, we are giving up a life we never owned, and gaining a life that is a gift. Our new lives, our new purity is nothing that we accomplished. It's not some new white robe we picked up at the "Simply Heavenly Robes" store. We can't buy these new lives; we can't earn these new lives: they are owned by our Savior because He bought them with His blood!!!!
This in and of itself is no new concept, yet in my mind it flooded every synapse and made me step back and just say, "WHAT?!?!?" This is what I'm living: a life purchased and owned by Christ because he paid in full (TETELESTA) for my sins and my life.
This changes everything! We have a free, non-sinbound life that has been given to us to live and to use to glorify Him who bought it for us. So what are we doing to show our gratitude for grace? What are we doing to point back to our Dad and say, "This isn't me that you are seeing...it's Him!"
Just a thought...or maybe a challenge?
