Foundation Stones #5 – Living by a Life Not Your Own | Christ Within You & the True Christian Life

Next!

Aren’t you glad He ascended? And aren’t you glad that He came through your bones?

Okay, this must be clear to you that these 12 men had a habit of fellowshipping with Christ. They had fellowshipped with Him for three and a half years. They had watched Him fellowship with the Father. They had watched Him hear voices. They had watched Him answer. They watched Him love the Father. They had watched the Father love Him. They watched Him obey the Father.

Now then, they had really gotten used to this. They know all about it. They’ve seen it for three and a half years. Now, we would think that their fellowship with Christ had ended. If so, there’s great damage because now there can be no church, because the church must include a fellowship with God, with Christ. And the Christian life would be impossible because only God can live the Christian life, and these are just men, ordinary fishermen from Galilee, illiterate. There would be no hope for the church. There’d be no hope for the Christian life, and there would certainly be no hope for workers, but because they had the habit of fellowshipping with a physical Christ, He came into them and they reestablished the habit. Only instead of Him being without, He is within. Do you understand what I am saying? They set up again lines of communication with their Lord.

Now the lines ran inside, and they found fellowshipping with the Christ who dwelt within them very similar to dwelling with the Christ whom they had had breakfast, lunch, and supper with, and one of them hadn’t even laid on His chest.

Well, that is so important to the Christian faith today that those men could do that. This is why the Lord Jesus had lived with them physically so they would know how to set up lines of communication with Him when He came to indwell them, and then to pass that indwelling fellowship on to whom? To me, who? Huh? To you, but first to 3,000 people in Jerusalem. Isn’t that easy? You will often hear me say, “Christ lives in you.” And you are to live the Christian life by a life not your own. By a life form, not your own. You understand life forms? By a life form not your own, but that is not something you see and just do. It takes time to understand an indwelling Christ. It takes time to set up lines of communication with an indwelling Christ. And I’ll tell you quite frankly, it takes somebody helping you. Do you know something else? It takes a little faithfulness on your part to pursue Him, but that takes care of itself. If you love Him, you do, and if you don’t love Him, you don’t. So, where are your priorities?

I was having a hard time, and a brother said to me, “Gene, are you living by a life not your own? Are you living by the life of Christ?” Because I wasn’t joyful, I guess that’s what it was. He saw my relationship at that moment with the Lord as a failure. Well, I want you to know something, the Lord was not always having the greatest day that ever lived, that ever was. The Lord had hard days. There were days when he had a hard time making it. The day that Lazarus died was a hard day for Him. The day before He was crucified was a hard day for Him; the day He was crucified wasn’t exactly easy either.

He’s a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. When I speak of living by the Lord’s life, I am not speaking of all fun and entertainment. If you’ll read one of my books, you’ll find this statement: anyone who lives by the life of God, anyone who lives by divine life, anyone who lives by means of the Christ who dwells within Him, the ultimate conclusion of that will be, he will be –  how is he crucified? Publicly crucified.

Thank you, Tom. That’s where you end up living by a life not your own. So, when I talk to you about living by the life of Christ within you, don’t think that this is all sparklers and Merry Christmas, but it still beats living a human life, and it takes time to learn that life. Takes time to set up communications, and you need some help. Boy, I would have liked to have had the help those 3,000 had. I would have liked to have had the 12 to tell me how to set up lines of communication with the indwelling Christ.

There was a very small move from their adjustment to living with the physical Christ and the Christ within them. I never had that privilege, and for me, it is a monumental shift that will take months and years to be able to handle, and I want you to know it drives me buggy that brothers and sisters do not pursue finding a place to learn that. You should sell all, leave all, forget all for the hope of learning to know Him who dwells within you, to learn it well, and to the pit with all this doctrine and legalism and garbage that’s passed off as the Christian life.

The Christian life is first and foremost your Lord. And that’s what these people shared. They had no other alternative because that’s all they knew. 12 men shared Christ with those people. They told them, and I’m coming back to what John said, what we have seen and heard, let us declare to them. But you know that’s not all John said. He said, “What I have seen and heard, let us declare to you.” And he went on to say, “Not only what I saw and what I heard, but I have,” not past tense, but present tense, “I have fellowship with the Father and with the Son.”

They were still having fellowship with the Father and the Son there in Solomon’s porch, and they were telling God’s people about it. And I think the most exciting thing about this is the way they shared it was not much different than the way the Lord Jesus shared it. And you know it’s so simple. A lot of it’s visual. You just watch and you listen, but then you have to watch even closer and then watch some more, and then watch even closer, and then every once in a while you get some help. A very small help, very little practical thing, something you will think is not really all that important or it is so simple it couldn’t be monumental, and then it turns out that that simple little thing is something you can hang a large part of your Christian life on for the rest of your life, If it never becomes a method. If it never becomes a method.