Good morning…
Growing up in a Christian home, he had believed in Jesus all his life. Dutifully he went through the habits of faith. Church. Baptism. Confirmation. Prayer. Bible study. Trying to be good and do good. Yet when God’s moment was exactly right, he finally heard the voice of the risen Christ knocking on the door to his very own heart: “Please let me in.”
“I knew that to open the door might have momentous consequences,” said Reverend John Stott. “I am profoundly grateful to God for enabling me to open the door. Looking back now over more than 50 years, I realize that that simple step has changed the entire direction, course and quality of my life.”
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily (Galatians 2:19-21, MSG).
When inside the chambers of our very own beating heart, the voice of Christ continues to speak: “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant” (John 15:4-5, MSG).
We don’t know the mysterious details of God’s abundant harvest – what unique blessings, who will be fed, when, how, and where. Only God knows the eternal richness which blossoms on the branch our daily lives. Our only focus is to keep our attention on the place where our single branch meets God’s living vine, remaining at home in Christ while Christ remains at home in us. Our life-giving relation is intimate and organic. Intricately joined in the heart of our innermost being, we hear his voice and we know he lives. In and through us, we know Christ lives.
…Sue…
