I CAN NOT GIVE MY LIFE TO CHRIST!

 

written by Michael McBane

I recently shared this but I can’t stop allowing it to turn the soil of my heart. I have known the Lord because He came to me since 1970. Yet, one of the more refreshing things I have read in recent days paraphrased is  "we don't have a life to give Christ”. We cannot come to Him with this mindset. It is destructive, erosive, it is a prison. We do not have a life to give to Christ. He gave His life to us." This just continues to roll over and over in me and every time it does it totally undoes everything. I feel as if I am being inoculated against the virus that weakens expansive faith. All our models of life are imploded here in, whether they be practical or contained in the culture of ministry. This understanding rewrites the program and demands that we shut the spiritual computer down sit back and soak the horizon of this in and reboot. Much of what we attempt to attach life to crashes in when subjected to this paradigm. This must be our reality in a Christ centered life. I have nothing to give You Lord but I am here so that I can be loved by You. And this is the start and finish. I have no life to make you better Jesus. I have nothing to contribute to make ministry work. Get this and Jesus can show up. If this is not how we approach the Christian life we will return to our own strength. We will take our aspirations and turn them into the dreams of God. We will attract false words that divert us from the true wealth of knowing how to live in Christ. We are confined because if we do not know that we do not have anything to give to Christ to make us more valued, hence we will live with the reserve of who we are as we age within our Christian fellowship. And therefore we will be limited. We may build temporal monuments of symbolic Christianity but it will lack the fullness of Christ because we deposited into the mix what we brought to the equation to make God wealthier.

If I hear my readers say, “what you didn’t know this”? I can only then retort and ask, knowing is not life. For if so many truly know this then why do we live like we do not? We continue to drop quarters into the slot machines of structures that have a merry go round fixt it tive. We continue to prop up things that are personality driven and these are things that can not live within the characterization of coming to Christ with nothing.

Consider these words found in Acts 3:6, “But Peter said, ‘I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: ‘In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene-walk!”

This is the same Peter who told Jesus He had nothing and no one except Christ, to whom else would I turn? Peter had no plan B.

Can we truly let our fixation on being gifted men and women diminish and come again to Him empty. I am not invalidating the gifts by any means but I am asking us to willingly make an adjustment to our subjection to Christ.

You see I can taste the richness of these words even as I write. There is a deep satisfaction here.

Consider the conversion of Paul. A man who murdered Christians, he was sought after by Christ. Jesus knocks Paul, then Saul, off of his horse and makes him blind so that he could see. Jesus confronts Him with light and life. He does not have to remind him of his conduct or sin. It is there. But because of Christ it is gone and all that Saul/ Paul can do is see the Good News. He speaks, Lord. After a series of events that Paul was instructed towards he does not become immersed in any desire to add to the “church” no he departs into the wilderness.  For over a decade he allows God to take out of him the world and its value. And Paul begins to allow the fermentation of living a life in the only way that has lasting value. He as he tells us in various ways through his letters lives through Christ and cannot depart to anything less. Only from this foundation does Paul return with true deep Godly authority. He brought not a restructured format of worldly wisdom to create programs for short served Christian structure. He brought a man empty of who he was and served Christ.

Jesus sought after Paul, and He gave Him life and did so with such an abundance that Paul lived extraordinarily ordinary. His faith was a fragrance that was powerful. It was not a lot of slick motivational theory that is reissued over and over. Paul was fixated on Christ. 

Paul was not attached to the law to erase sin, He was formed in Christ and this formation blossomed a love, an adoration that drew towards finding the pleasure of God. So Paul knew that sin could not be conquered unless one knew that the Father gave us Jesus and Jesus sought after us. Here sin has no drawing when one is immersed in the love of God. Take your eyes off of Jesus and we are weak. So what can we bring to God?

I tell you this, when I truly think upon the words that I began with, I do not have a life to give to Christ as our ministries ask. Give your life to Christ. I have nothing. I then see how God in Christ has so sought after me. I am fearful of what we indulge in. I am very fearful of this. 

Oh, God I want, I need Your life to take any step that has worth.  May YOUR Kingdom come. Your Kingdom!

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  • Peter, Thank you for imparting the richness of our lives in Christ and His subsequent life in us! "For our lives are hidden with Christ in God." Paul the Apostle

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