What am I Living for?

THE  SECOND PARCEL OF  GIFTS

The answer to this question lies in the final great gift of God to humans.  I am going to leapfrog the second parcel for a few moments because I want to give you a vision of what your future could ultimately become.  Now you may question that you already know about this, because by believing in Jesus you already have an eternal life which will be spent up in Heaven for a while and then later return to a completely cleansed, remade and beautiful earth.  That is true, and let me say this, that the Bible tells us that we are completely unable to imagine how incredible that state will be.  And I need to tell you that millions of believers will arrive in heaven to a future just like that.

What I now want to tell you, is that millions of other believers will arrive in Heaven to a future which is even more fantastic than the basic package.  This is what God’s final gift is all about.  He has in mind, to shower these specially privileged groups of his followers, with a load of gifts which are not related to the basic gift of eternal life.  This final gift is actually a group of gifts, of all sorts and sizes suitable to each individual involved.  These gifts will be perks, privileges and responsibilities which we cannot fully understand while we are still in our earthly state; but they have been promised, and they are called by several names.

I am calling these benefits gifts even though they are only gifts in one sense.  In a more correct sense, it is better to label them rewards, because they are awarded for things we have done while still on this earth.  As a matter of fact, they are only awarded for earthly behaviour, so that, when we die, these rewards will be fixed forever, for the whole of eternity.  No subsequent living in Heaven will effect these rewards in any way.  We cannot raise or lower our status in Heaven ever again, after we are finished down here.

From what we can understand, these rewards will fall into several categories.  Some will receive rulerships over territories, others will rule from thrones near Jesus himself while others again will be gifted with added abilities to the ones they used on earth.  We have no idea what these things will entail, but one thing is for sure, they are painted as very enviable positions. 

Now you may be thinking, there is no way I am into that sort of thing, I am only a labourer, or a housewife or whatever; but here is the surprising feature.  Everything is reversed from what it was on earth.  The somebodies on earth will be nobodies up there and the nobodies down here will be somebodies up there.  The criteria for promotion up there are things like humility, faithfulness, loss, poverty, martyrdom etc.  Try reading Matthew chapter five, and you will see what I mean.

You will notice that I am not quoting the Bible or being very definitive about the subject.  That is because I want you to read about this situation yourself.  The main source, by far,  is Jesus himself in his teachings in the four gospels.  He told lots of stories to teach the importance of the subject and the best way you can familiarize yourself is to read them yourself.  There is also one book, by Rick Joyner, listed at the bottom of this article, which I strongly suggest you read.

Having said that, I would like to remind you again of that passage by the apostle Paul (1Corinthians chapter 3) who predicted that life is like a building.  We have the foundation, which is our belief in Jesus Christ, then on this foundation, we will build structures as we live; some will be made of Gold, silver and precious stones, others of us will build in wood, hay and straw, then at the end of time our structures will be tested by fire.  As you can readily see, the last three materials will burn away, leaving nothing but the foundation of Jesus Christ.  He firmly declares that all groups will be saved because of their foundation, but the last group will have nothing to show for their whole life’s work down here.  That is so sad.  I will refer to this illustration some more as we go on.

A very strange feature of present day Christianity is that this subject is seldom preached about in churches.  I find this hard to understand, given the very short period of our lives we live down here, and the incredible length of eternity to be lived up there.  I really must warn you that there are going to be a lot of people up there whose eternity will be filled with regrets because they got their priorities wrong down here.  Please, please, do not short change yourself.  It’s too big a deal to ignore.  If you can be warned, I know that you will thank me one day.

I have explained this feature, not because it comes next, but because we need to know where we are going, before we can know why we are here.  We are here to prepare for an incredibly grand future.  Now I am sure you will be itching to know what it is that we can do to erect ourselves one of these substantial buildings.  The clue to this answer lies in one of the gifts in our second parcel.  So we will now proceed to open it

The second parcel

The moment we believe on Jesus we receive eternal life; that we have established.  But that is only part of the deal.  In actual fact we receive another full parcel of privileges of which eternal life is only one of the packages.  First of all, you will come across a bundle of packages and one on its own.  I will deal with this one first.  It is the gift of a whole new family.  The moment you believe on Jesus you are adopted into a new family.  God becomes your new Father, making one of your new titles a “Child of God”, Jesus becomes like a new elder brother, while every other Christian becomes your brother or sister.  This family is now, actually, more important than your own family, because this new family will be your family forever.  You now belong to a royal family because your father is a king, the King of the universe.  This gift of family members is the only tangible, earthly asset you will receive by entering into God’s new deal, and it is the only earthly asset you can take from earth to Heaven when you go.  Nothing of your money, possessions, property or businesses can be taken to Heaven when you leave this earth.  Treasure your family, value them and exercise this gift as often as you can.

Then again, the opposite is also true.  Your new family is also the first tangible, visible piece of your eternal life which you can actually see and possess in this present world.  Yes it is true that you already possess eternal life, but you cannot see this by sight, you can only possess it by faith, but your new family is really real.  Always keep this in mind when you are dealing with them.

There is a new commandment given by Jesus to his new followers.  He said, “A new  commandment, I am giving to you, that you love one another.”  Then later, John gives us the two great commandments of the Christian faith.  These are to believe on Jesus Christ and to love each other of our fellow believers.  Our attitude to our fellow believers and our relationship to them was extremely important to Jesus.  In his last and greatest prayer before he went off to die on the cross for us, quoted in John 17, He prays first for himself, then for his disciples, (pupils) then for us, his future followers.  For us, his most important request, is that we get on together in unity.  He actually stated that such unity would be the most convincing testimony to the world of the benefits of being a Christian.

It is exactly because of that prayer that our enemy, Satan, set out to spoil the Christian faith by making it the most divided religion on earth; and he succeeded, as you are aware, by the number of denominations and church groups.  But rest assured, he will not get the last laugh on this one.  So, make every effort to be with fellow believers and get on with them, even though it will not always be easy; and keep watching out for the divisions and hostilities you will see the enemy trying to introduce.  It is quite fascinating to watch, if it weren’t so sad.

The best fellowshipping is to be found in small groups where you can get to know each other and support each other.  Having said that, I must also say, finding a good group to belong to will not be easy.  But never give up.  There are some good books in the market place on this subject and I would be happy to recommend them to you if you are interested enough to enquire.

Now; let’s unwrap that other bundle of perks.

Plus, Plus, Plus.

Now you may have already begun to wonder, how it is that you possess eternal life and yet all Christians die.  According to the Bible, only two people in history avoided their own funerals and even Jesus Christ was not one of them.  The answer to that problem lies in the three gifts in this final package.  The peculiar nature of this group is that they are entirely inseparable.  You can’t have one without the other and they are all essential to each other.  Here they are

Eternal life, Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit.

As you read through the New Testament you will find frequent references to both Jesus and the Holy Spirit living inside you.  The moment you believe on Jesus, the Holy Spirit, who is the medium through which all this comes, brings Jesus to live within us, and Jesus is our eternal life.  That’s why they are inseparable.  It’s going to take a few minutes to explain how all this works, and I need to start somewhere, so I will first of all explain where it is they come to; what part of us is involved.

When God built us, he did not simply make an animal body and put a mind in it which made us more clever than the animals; he also installed a feature called our spirit or our heart.  The Bible actually uses the term heart more often than the term spirit, but I will probably refer to it as our spirit, so long as you can differentiate between God’s Holy Spirit and our spirit.  God intended our spirit to be a place where he lived in us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.  When Adam sold us down the river, God backed out of our spirits, leaving them empty.  In the sense of this emptiness, our spirits are often called dead; dead, because they no longer house the Spirit of life, but they are still not dead in that they do not function.  It is this empty, hungry state of our spirits which causes us so much grief and makes us the worst animal on earth.  This emptiness is sometimes referred to in the Bible as a hard heart, or a heart of stone.

At the moment of believing the Holy Spirit enters our spirit and takes up residence there, so that once again we have the Spirit of life back inside us again.  This is why Christians call themselves, “born again”.  Our lonely, empty spirits now house their lost, disinherited, possession again, none other than God himself.  Jesus and his apostles talked often of Jesus living inside us, and we living in him.  Jesus talked often of the kingdom of heaven; this is what he was referring to.  He said, ‘the kingdom of heaven is within you.”  God, as king, has taken up his rulership in your heart so that now it has become his kingdom.

BUT, this gift is only automatic in its entry, but never in its use.  This is where the crunch comes.  Millions of Christians will arrive in heaven having possessed the presence of Jesus within themselves all their Christian lives, but never profited from it because, either they were not aware He was there or, they chose not to avail themselves of this incredible gift. Ignorance is excusable, but the choice not to avail ourselves is a terrible disservice to ourselves.

God holds out to all believers, the incredible opportunity to get to know our Jesus Saviour, personally; and this is exactly where we will need to go to find him.  After we have cooperated with God in building up this relationship, mostly through a prayer relationship and over months, or even years, the Holy Spirit will begin to give us directions or instructions; to communicate the will of God into our spirits.  As we begin to obey and to minister to other people, in our fellowship or even to unbelievers, we will begin to find that we possess a peculiar ability or even several abilities, which we were unaware of.  These are known in the Bible as the gifts of the Spirit or spiritual gifts.  They are another sub-parcel, if you wish but it will take some time to find them.  (The Spirit’s gifts are explained in Romans 12, 1Corinthians 12 and Ephesisns 4.)  These things cannot be rushed.  It is partly through the operation of the Holy Spirit using these abilities that we begin build up those brownie points which will result in the privileges in heaven.

God has a great plan for everyone’s life and he wants to lead you into realizing that plan; but it will not be until you have learned to form a close relationship with Jesus and learned to find Him obediently and honestly, that you will begin to see that plan unfold.    Besides, it will do you no good going to him and asking him to show you your future, you won’t get it.  Only in a close friendship and attitude of cooperation, will you see that plan reveal itself, and only as it unfolds each day.

The greatest rewards in heaven will be awarded for following God’s directions but the structure of that building which will endure for eternity does not start when we begin to start work under the Holy Spirit, it begins when we begin to form a personal relationship with Jesus himself.  And this is where we arrive at the crux of the whole Christian economy.

Jesus Christ

Jesus is the central figure, the cornerstone, the pivot of the whole structure of Christianity.  That’s why this faith is called Christianity.  God decided that He would send Jesus to earth and make Him the central axis around which the whole salvation thing would revolve.  That is why, believing in God, reading the Bible or living a good life will never save us.  Jesus has been made the issue, whatever we may feel about it.  So, it is by His dieing on the cross that our first hurdle was accomplished; and equally, it is by Him that the second hurdle of eternal life comes to pass.  And here is how.

Jesus made an incredible claim about Himself which is absolutely vital.  He said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  Jesus did not simply have life, He was life, He is life.  That is how we come to possess eternal life.  It is because we possess Him.  Colossians 3 states that He is our life.  So that 1 John 5:11 puts it this way.  “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.  He who has the Son has life; and he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

Believing on Jesus does not make us immortal so that we will never die.  Believing on Jesus brings Jesus into our inner spirit so that we possess Him who is eternal life.  So long as we continue believing in Him we will possess eternal life, but only so long as we believe.  This means that even though we may go to our own funeral, our eternal life is still secure, because it consists of Jesus Christ and not our decaying bodies.  So that “our life is hid with Christ in God.” (Collosians 3) whether we are dead or alive.  That is why Christians believe in a resurrection.  God simply must raise us to life again because life is our personal possession secured by ourselves by virtue of our faith in Jesus Christ.  So my favourite text in the Bible is absolutely true.  John 5:24  “He that hears My word and believes on Him that sent me, has everlasting life.  He shall not pass into condemnation for he has already passed from death to life.”

The Bible clearly teaches that only God is immortal which means no one else can be, and it teaches that when we go to heaven, we will put on immortality.  We will possess immortality only as we possess Jesus.  This is why there will be a tree of life in the new earth, just as there was in the garden of Eden.  It will serve as a constant reminder that only in Him can we “live and move and have our being.”

So there we have the second benefit Jesus gives us.  Upon believing, Jesus comes to live in our spirits which means that we now have life in our spirit and can be called born again.  Now we come to the next great benefit which Jesus brings to us.  Not just His forgiveness, not just His life, but Himself.  From this point on, in the Christian life, this person within us, must be the sole concentration of our whole experience.  From now on stop worrying about the Holy Spirit, or His gifts, or building that house of good stones, or our rewards in heaven.  Solely concentrate on getting to know Jesus and all those other things will fall into place, I promise you.  But be warned, this is the hard part of Christianity.

The process of finding Him is actually the work of finding our own heart, because that is where He now dwells.  We modern technocrats find this to be a difficult journey, but it must be travelled for the rewards to be realised.  Not to travel it, is to leave us in constant danger anyhow; the danger of losing the gift of eternal life which we already have.  The secret as to how this is done, lies in our prayer life, quietly and personally with God but this will be next to impossible to follow without a good strong bonding with our fellow believers.  We need to see that that other gift of a new family now comes together with the gift of Jesus as twofold necessity in working this whole thing out. 

You may have as much or as little of God as you want, but you will only have a fulfilled life on earth and a filled full life in heaven in proportion to the amount of God you have in the here and now.

.The Holy Spirit revisited

To help you to consolidate your thinking, I would like to return to the subject of the Holy Spirit because H is a very predominant feature of the modern Christian church.  The modern emergence of the Pentecostal / Charismatic movements has done much to return this subject to our consciousness.  Performing miracles, healing people, giving them messages from God and hearing his voice can be a lot of fun, it is a great joy to see people helped in such tangible ways and, and of course we all hope to be rewarded for such activities when we arrive in eternity.  But!!!, there are great dangers and warnings.  Just try reading 1st Corinthians chapter 13.

The hype and fanfare of being caught up in such spectacularities is not the basic core of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives.  In John 3, Jesus explains that the most effective presence of the Spirit is quiet and unseen, like the wind.  The greatest contribution of the Spirit into our lives is his personal instruction / teaching; the transfer of God’s directions from himself to us.  Jesus made many claims that, while he was with us, His whole life was personally directed by his father.  He claimed that he made no moves in his ministry without first hearing God’s directions to do so, then finally, in John 17, he made it very clear that this directed obedience programme was exactly what he wanted all Christians to follow.  Under the old Jewish covenant God indicated his directions for peoples’ lives by listing behaviours in rules and regulations.  In the New Covenant he intends that we change over to the practice of being directed by His Holy Spirit, just as Jesus was.

 “Born again”

The expression, being born again, has become very popular in modern Christian speak. Being born again is everything, being born again is nothing. It is everything in that we have now been born into the family of God, with a new parent and new siblings and the life of Jesus and the Holy Spirit have now been birthed within us.  But that is all.

To understand my point, let’s go back to our first birth; or perhaps I should say our second birth.  My first birth happened when the genes from my father and mother sorted out their differences and I became a unique me.  The next birth was the transition from the womb to the outside world, but let’s look at where that left us.  The only change for a new born baby is that it is outside the womb and can breath its own air.  It cannot feed, drink or clean itself; it cannot walk or talk or control its bodily functions; It doesn’t know anything.  It doesn’t know who it is, its own name, its parents or its family.  In short it is all set up to die, without support from its family.  Well that’s exactly how we are when we are born again.  There is a whole lot of growing and learning to get on with.  And, just as with the baby, it is only as that programme is pursued that we have any chance of making it in this new world. 

Apart from the odd miracle of healing or the cancellation of an addiction, which the Holy Spirit does perform for some individuals, almost nothing has changed for the born again Christian.  This is why, once the dust has settled, new Christians can’t figure out why things stay much the same.  Their old sins emerge, their character shows its old defects, for all to see, and life settles back to somewhere near boring.  There is something missing here.  What is missing is the growing up, the learning to get to know the Jesus within us.

Unfortunately the expression, “born again” is used to create expectations that the new believer is a new person, with a new life, utterly removed from the old one.  Is it any wonder that unbelievers have learnt to view the expression with cynical indifference, especially when they cannot see any miraculous change in this supposedly different person.  All that has happened is that the Jesus with His life has entered our spirits so that they now have life in them.  But there is still the long path of developing that life, growing it and letting it reach outwards into our visible lives before others can begin to notice any changes.

Pentecostal – Charismatic emphasis

If you want a live church with a vibrant and go-ahead economy you will need to visit a Pentecostal type assembly or a traditional church with a minister who has a Pentecostal tendency.  Big, powerful, growing churches tend to develop around charismatic leaders with a tendency to major on the work of the Holy Spirit.  Such movements have saved Christianity from extinction in this godless age.  Their praise and worship sessions are something else.  Christian music and song has really come of age these days. 

However, people can be attracted to such groups because they sometimes tend towards more emphasis on the spectacular aspects of the gifts of the Spirit rather than the quiet knowing of Jesus.  My personal belief is that God has been with this thrust because He has needed to wave this thing before our faces in order to turn our attention.  It seems to me that the manifestation of miracles and ecstatic experiences usually associated with the Pentecostal movement, is an attention getting device used by God as a convincing operation.  The problem arises when we try to remain in that phase because it is so wonderful after the barren desert which marks our lives previously; and much of Pentecostal association is centred around trying to keep that initial experience alive.  But, inevitably this initiation tends to fade, leading the believer to wistfully hanker for those early days.  The church meetings also settle down to simply being hyped up versions of all Christian church meetings; while the praise and worship sessions work hard to recapture the early drama. 

Finally another problematic effect is that ecstatic and miraculous interventions only happen to some individuals and not to others.  These poor believers are left thinking, “Why didn’t I have a spectacular conversion experience like that?”

What God really intends, is to draw both types of believer into Himself, to build up this personal friendship with Jesus, and then later, to operate all the powers of the Holy Spirit out of that friendship rather dropping them on us from a great height.  You see, we do possess the gifts of the Spirit, right from day one; so it is possible to find them and work in them and have a lot of fun doing so.  But the shortcomings of this programme are clearly revealed in 1Corithians chapter 13.

The differences between majoring on the Holy Spirit and majoring on the Christ within is actually revealed in our outward lives.  This brings us to the subject of the fruits of the Spirit.  In Galatians 5, the fruits of the Spirit are listed as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.  Such behaviours cannot come from the manifestations of the Spirit’s working, they can only come from the getting to know Jesus personally.  People have every right to have expectations of professing Christians just as Christians themselves have the same expectations and they soon become aware that these expectations are so impossible to fulfill.

These gentle behaviours are tall orders.  As a matter of fact they are an impossible realisation without the knowing of Jesus personally.  Over the last hundred years or so, God has gone to spectacular lengths to convince us of the reality, power and presence of His Spirit, but this programme has also left us in danger of making the mistakes of 1Coritnthians 13.  So, I must now warn you that there are dangers and obstacles which must be dealt to, in order to get to this privileged position.  The realisation of the glorious benefits of the Holy Spirit and the rewards in heaven demands a price to be paid, a difficult path to be trod and a battle to be fought.  The presence of Jesus in our spirit is absolutely free; learning to access him there and to live in companionship with him costs.  It costs heavy; yes it could even cost us everything.  You’ve had the good news, now comes the tough news.  That is why I have left its explanation to last.

 The tough news

Now we come to the real crunch of the Christian life.  I have opened to you the great gifts of God, but I haven’t yet told you of the costs; the sacrifices you will need to make, and the difficulties to be endured.  Not even in the divine economy do you get something for nothing.  If you want the privileges, then you must face the responsibilities.  The elevated positions and high honours will arrive, the same way they come on earth; through sacrifice, pain and hard work; and a big fight as well.  We have an enemy who doesn’t like you and wants to spoil your party, if he can; and he will oppose you all the way, but if you want the prize, you must run the race. 

Jesus said, “If anyone would be my disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”  The only way to emerge the Christ within is to follow through on those three steps outlined by Jesus. 

1)      Deny yourself.

 In brief, this means to give up everything in our lives which gets in the way of developing the relationship with Jesus.  Like all good relationships, the chief ingredient is time.  In order to find the time, other things of lesser importance must be given up until we get the time;.  This will also involve things which counteract Jesus’ influence and are hostile to his kingdom.  Jesus referred to success in this venture as knowing him, and he wants us to get to know him and he can be rather impatient with people who profess to be his disciples but don’t know him.

The work of getting to know Jesus is accomplished in much the same way as the work of holding on to our salvation; by spending time reading the Bible, by fellowshipping with fellow saints and by deepening our prayer life.  The fellowshipping, though, needs to be much deeper.  Form a close bond with a few others who are on the same journey and draw strength and encouragement from each other.  But the real secret lies in the prayer life.  Praying must reach a whole new level where communing with God becomes a continuous state, carried on in the mind, as we seek to think God’s thoughts after Him.

There have been some excellent books written on this subject and I have to recommend them as essential reading.  Although they were written three hundred years ago, they are still the best spiritual classics available.  They are listed at the end of this article.  The counsel I have given you here will be drastically incomplete if you don’t bother to read those incredible publications.

The continuous nature of this relationship will have an effect on you which Jesus variously referred to as  having living water flowing out of us, drinking water which would never leave us thirsty again, being grafted into him as the vine stock and even drinking his blood and eating his flesh.  Of course, this is all using earthly mediums for illustration.  “God is love”  The whole journey of the Christian life centres around Jesus Christ and the theme of love.  God loves humans; we respond to His love, we begin to love Him in return and then to love others; first of all believers then unbelievers as well.  But this special, non-human love will only be realized as we access the Christ within.  As you read 1Coritnians 13 you will realize that humans, of themselves, simply cannot generate that level of niceness.  Such a picture can only come from the knowing of Jesus.

To accomplish all this, means that you will need to live life with different priorities, hence Jesus’ requirement that we deny ourselves of everything which gets in its way.

2)      Take up your cross.

Here’s the toughest part.  This is where the men are sorted from the boys.  Here is the point where many Christians peel away and return to being pew warmers because the going gets too tough.  This is the fork in the road where the rewards are either worked for or given away – forever.

The cross on which Jesus died to save us, was the instrument chosen by God where Jesus was to submit to the challenge of remaining loyal to God’s plan or of giving that plan away.  Our crosses are the instruments God chooses for us to test our loyalty and our determination to stick it through.  They are given to toughen us up and strengthen our faith in what we cannot see. They are to help us to learn to sing in the dark, so that we will learn forever to sing in the light.

Persecution and trial will be a part of this programme; it is unavoidable. It was promised by Jesus and by His followers and it will come to all those who set out to, “live Godly in Christ Jesus.”  And it must be said that the tougher and longer the crosses you will be asked to bear, the greater the ministry you will be engaged in later on.  It’s a tough school; the stakes are high, but the rewards are incredible.  Try reading the stories of Joseph and Moses in Genesis and Exodus.  Their early hell was needed before they were capable of the incredible contributions they made later.  Not that we are all destined to be Moseses.

Now you might ask, “What are the benefits from pursuing the gift of the Jesus within?”  The greatest thrill will come from getting to know Him, but there are plenty of other benefits as well.  It is while we are doing this seeking and finding of Him that we will start to achieve the victory over sin habits and addictions which have plagued our lives.  It is always expected of Christians that they will stop doing bad things and commence doing good things.  In actual fact, this is impossible; we just haven’t the power to change ourselves like that, to any great degree.  The power to give up bad habits and start good ones can only come from this programme, it will not come just from being saved.

You may be finding that this article is unlike other Christian material in that it doesn’t have a lot to say about sin.  Traditionally, Christianity is associated with a lot of inveighing against sin.  I have little to say about it because it is little of a problem to God.  He dealt to the punishment and sentence for sin at the cross and he can easily deal with the power of sin in our lives when we come to develop the Christ within us.  So sin is not a problem to him.  His problem with us is with our rebellion and independence.  If we will not accept Jesus or get to know him, God cannot deal with any sin problems because of our rebellion.  He can only sit on his hands; He is powerless under such circumstances.

3)   And follow Me

When we believe in Jesus and are given eternal life, many people think that their lives will change by some miracle or at least because they now have a new life by being born again.  It wont happen; it doesn’t happen; and all our will power and determination will not make it happen.  Changing our lives is not automatic, nor is it the result of our will to do so, it is only and ever the result of cultivating the presence of Jesus within us.  Actually, most of us are fairly unaware of the habits and practices which cause us so much grief, so Jesus will use this friendship to discover our problems to us, one by one, so that they can be repented of and given up.  This programme becomes tolerable and achievable only when we are close friends of Himself.

Since the gifts of believing on Jesus and knowing Jesus are the most critical of all, they are the most hated of all by our enemy, the devil, and they suffer the most attacks and are consequently the least believed by the rank and file of Christian believers.  The need for true fellowship has given rise to the home church movement and the outward workings of the Holy Spirit have given rise to the pentecostal movement and it can well be said that this is due in part to the fact that they are not as vital as the other two gifts.  Sadly, the assurance which comes by believing on Jesus and the secret life of knowing Jesus, are not always the dominant features of Christianity which they should be.  Sure many know a lot about Jesus, but that is different to knowing Him; just as we may know a lot about our president or prime minister but very few will know them personally.  The great tension between following the popular mode as opposed to knowing Jesus can best be summed up in the advice to get off the popular tendency to revel in the gifts and instead, get to know the Giver first and foremost.  The Giver, or His gifts, which will we worship?

When we have activated this programme of getting to know Jesus, then our lives will begin to resemble His.  Then those fruits of the Spirit will begin to quietly emerge and Jesus will indicate to us what gifts of the Spirit we possess and how to use them.  That is the correct order of events; then we will begin to accumulate those brownie points for eternity which we have all been promised.  And that process is the whole life story for the Christian which will continue for as long as we remain on this earth.  And that process is the true meaning of life.  It is exactly why we are here; it is our God-given destiny and, therefore, will bring us the greatest joy we can possibly imagine, in the long run.  The meaning of life for me, is the will and plan which God has for my life.  Nothing more and nothing less.

Receiving eternal life by believing on Jesus is the foundation of living the Christian life, but it is not the central core of living that life, nor is fellowshipping with other believers, nor is having Jesus’ life birthed inside us, nor the Holy Spirit birthed inside us, nor exercising the activities of the Holy Spirit.  The central core of the Christian life lies in exercising the Christ within us; by developing our relationship with Him.

The issue of turning our attention to His life within is not a popular theme.  Sadly, when Jesus tried to present this part of His economy to His followers one day, half of them left Him.  (John 6)    And I don’t think the situation has changed much, even today.  We want what we want and we want it now.  Free salvation, that’s fine, but if anything is required of us, like a bit of sacrifice or effort, we spit our dummies and shoot through.  Mankind have the edge on being ungrateful and I have full respect for a God who will spit His dummy over us when we turn Him down out of pique, because He didn’t appear to accommodate us just as we expected He should.

We have two major questions which need to be answered in life; 1) will we believe in Jesus and 2), will we find Him and follow Him.  Everything else is God’s problem which we need not be concerned with.  This whole construct is founded on Jesus Christ both as to its entry and its journey, because, “there is no other name, under Heaven, given among men, whereby we can be saved.”  And we need saving; we need saving from death and we need saving from ourselves; and yet, when we reach the end of that journey, we will receive these great bonus rewards.  “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for us.”

This article has provided a framework for the Christian life, only.  You will need to do much other reading to flesh out the details; both of the Bible and the books listed below; but having this framework will be like having a roadmap; you will be able to know where you are and where you are going.  Hang in there, and keep reading, over and over again.

Some Christians will tell you that this website is an intellectual approach to Christianity.  They will indicate that this is a defective process in that it doesn’t reach the heart.  God has two ways of getting through to lost mankind and both are right.  Yes this site does seek to convince you intellectually; the other method is for God to approach you directly through a fantastic experience of some sort.  I cannot reproduce that experience by any form of media, except that Christian media are full of examples of people who have had such experiences.  The road into Christianity does not matter.  What does matter is that the intellectual, must first believe that Jesus has given him eternal life, then must turn around and commence to find the Christ in his heart; and those who enter by experience, must also find the assurance of salvation based on believing in Jesus, then, likewise, proceed to seek the Christ within.  There maybe different entrances, but there is only one path.

There is one more article in this series which you may find interesting.  It answers the questions about why God allowed evil to come into His universe and why He allows it to continue to stay.  www.lifewhy.org/page4.html

Best books -----------

The Final Quest  by Rick Joyner.   

 Gives an incredible picture of the rankings and rewards in the afterlife.

The Call -  and

The Torch and the Sword also by Rick Joyner

Covers many of the thoughts referred to in this article.

Published by    www.morningstarministries.org  

Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ     Jeanne Guyon

One of the greatest books ever written on living the inner life with Christ.

The Spiritual Guide     Michael Molinos

Similar theme

The Autobiography of Jeanne Guyon

Words fail me to describe this book.  Quite traumatic, but the resultant ministry was something else.

Practicing His Presence      Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach

A famous classic

The secret to the Christian Life      Gene Edwards

A modern instruction book on the same theme

Any other books by Jeanne Guyon    These are the best

            Union With God   includes some of her poems

            Final Steps in Christian Maturity

            Intimacy With Christ

Gene Edwards runs the Seedsowers ministry which has an incredible array of publications.  He also specializes on the theme of home church type fellowships.  Excellent material.  All the above publications are available from Seedsowers, except those by Joyner.

Seedsowers publications     www.seedsowers.com

Other books I would recommend

Faith that Pleases God - Bob George.   Harvest House

The Life of Jeanne Guyon - TC Upham.    Seedsowers  -  Gives an excellent history of those times

Waking the Dead - John Eldredge      Thomas Nelson Publishers

Chapter eleven, “Fellowships of the heart” gives a real life view of what true fellowship can be like.