Going Back to the Garden

Welcome to another post on the Still in the Storm Substack.

Last week I made a less than triumphant return to writing after a longer than expected time off.

One of the things I talked about was waiting on the Lord.

I’m resolved to stop trying to live the Christian life and let Him.

You see I spent a lot of my life chasing my own success.

And, I did it under the guise of “doing the Lord’s work”.

My last job as a senior scientist was developing antibodies to treat cancer.

I wanted to bring better, safer treatments to horribly suffering patients.

So, I told myself that I was doing the Lord's work. I mean why not, right?

Except all I really wanted was to keep getting promoted.

More power, more authority, more money, more success.

Yes, that industry is just a tad soul sucking and ate me right up.

I was able to convince myself for a time but, not once did I ever stop to actually hear what the Lord had to say about it.

It was all me who was doing the work. I left nothing for the Lord.

I had it all under control and I was a darn good scientist.

At least that’s what I told myself.

Then I watched my Dad die of pancreatic cancer and Covid happened.

It all came crashing down.

Yet, the Lord was still there and for perhaps the first time I was aware of it.

Since then I’ve received incredible revelations of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, mind-blowing that its made all that I once strove for fall by the wayside.

I want to get out of His way, to fully yield to Him that He may live through me.

You may think I’m crazy but it sounds absolutely wonderful to me.

There is nothing greater than the Lord Jesus Christ and I believe anyone who truly catches a glimpse of Him as He really is would drop everything for Him.

Kinda like those 12 men did 2000 years ago when He walked this earth.

I’ve said before that I have always been Christian but never really knew what that meant, what it really was to live the Christian life.

That’s what I was getting at last week.

No longer rushing to do the work myself that I think the Lord wants or perhaps just I want but, rather waiting on Him do it through me.

So, now I want to unveil the Christian life to you a little bit more.

Have you ever wondered what it would have looked like had Adam and Eve only eaten from the Tree of Life and not that other tree?

Just look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels and you will see it.

See Him, the Word made flesh, walking the earth as fully man and fully God.

He as a man lived by the indwelling life of His Father by the Holy Spirit.

He lived the life that God always intended for Man when He created him.

Only after the fall that wasn’t possible anymore.

We were dead in our sins and permanently separated from God.

Since then we’ve continued to inherit that sinful nature from Adam.

But, God never stopped wanting to fulfill His original intention.

Truth be told, He completed His purpose in Christ before He even created but we’ll save that for another time.

So Jesus walked the earth and showed us what it was like for a man to live by the life of God.

Then He died for us to take care of our sins and the sinner, the old man within us.

He showed us what man was created to be and in so doing He made the Father visible to us.

For the first time we saw God. Not literally, not as He actually is but rather His nature.

Then by His obedience to the Father all the way to the cross He made it possible by ending the enmity between us and the Father so that we could once again draw near to Him.

But He didn’t do this just so we could go to Heaven when we die and only then enter into eternal life.

The Christian life isn’t something we wait to live until after we die.

It’s not a ticket to Heaven or a get out of hell free pass.

Unfortunately, many get stuck on the part where He died on the cross to take away our sins and deal with the old man within us.

They forget that He did it so we could live.

That we could live by His indwelling life just as He did of the Father when He lived on earth in the flesh.

Through Christ, God has reestablished His original intention for man.

To truly be saved we cannot just simply accept the incredible sacrifice that Jesus made for us.

We must also unreservedly give ourselves to Him that He may live through us.

Everything that is of ourselves must go away for its all opposed to God.

When Paul of Tarsus implores us in Romans 12 to present our bodies a living sacrifice to God he wasn’t messing around.

A better way to say it might be that we are to take our everyday, ordinary lives and place them before God as an offering.

That He may have preeminence. That He may have the priority. That He may do the heavy lifting. Not us.

He desires to live the very life He lived by the Father now in and through us.

Is that not amazing?

What an incredible Christ we have!

Just to be clear, the reason I bring this up is to give us insight into God’s intention, His purpose for creating man.

It certainly wasn’t to save us from our sins and give us a ticket to Heaven that we could live however we want until we die.

He always desired and still does that we eat from the Tree of Life, who is now Jesus Christ, God’s divine life in partake-able form.

His desire is that His life is dispensed into us and we live by that life.

In other words, that He lives through us.

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. - Galatians 2:20

You see the Christian life is an impossibility for us.

Nothing good dwells in the flesh and whatever comes from the flesh will always be flesh.

Only Spirit comes from Spirit.

To live to and for ourselves is to walk after the flesh!

To live to and for Christ is to walk after the Spirit!

So, you see He must live it in us, by us, for us.

To fully be human we need God.

Thankfully, through the finished work of Jesus Christ that is now possible.

This is what it truly means to be a human as God intended.

And, I think it’s wonderful and mind-blowing.

Brothers and sisters, we are to have the same relationship that Jesus had with the Father but now with Christ and He wants to live the same life through us.

Then God will be expressed and made visible to the world.

And it’s all to be done together with other members of His body.

We can know the indwelling presence of the risen Lord and learn to live by His life here and now.

I would love to know if this is something you’re heard about before, whether being preached about in church or elsewhere.

Let me know what you think in the discussion below.

Talk soon!

Your brother in Christ,

Mike

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