Expressing Christ - ARTICLE
Putting into words what really can only truly be known in experience can be our greatest challenge. When it comes to God, this challenge is faced in a greater way than anywhere else – Because He is ALL EXPERIENCE!
In fact, our entire experience of Him IS IN EXPERIENCE! We cannot learn Him in a book, not even His Book – We can only learn about Him in books. We cannot know Him outside of EXPERIENCE! If we do, we only know about Him.
He is A LIVING GOD, who seeks A LIVING RELATIONSHIP and A LIVING WALK with His children.
When we truly come to terms with what all this means and entails, our entire understanding and experience with Christianity as a whole are dramatically affected. We realize how dull most of what is religiously presented about Him really is, and how what most of what people are taught is really wrong also!
EXPERIENCE changes everything – It brings us into the Living knowledge of God that reveals and reflects Him as He really is. This is what happened with Jesus when He came on the scene, everything He was confronted everything man had understood God to be! The Bible teaches us that he came as the “express Image of the Father”. This confused the hell out of religion! Religious minds and religious thinking could not comprehend the living experience of this Living God that was being reflected and showcased by Jesus!
Today not much has changed. Religion still does not like a Living Christ, they still prefer a god that does not say too much, do too much, and who does nothing to interfere with their present understanding of him, as they have learned to understand him, carried over from the traditions of their father’s fathers.
Present a Living Christ in their midst and all hell breaks loose!
But here’s the thing – That’s exactly what God called us to do! He did not save us to talk to Him as a distant Saviour; He saved us to live in us as our present God! He saved you and me, not so that we would go to Heaven (although that is the prize of our salvation), He saved us for much more – He saved us so that he may reflect His Life in us and mirror Himself through us!
He wanted for us to become all that Jesus was to the world – He wants to EXPRESS HIMSELF through us!
This wonderful expression of the Life of Christ is what true Christianity is all about – We become living representatives, a living representation of all He is. Not through our own efforts or by our own wonderful works, but because He is ALIVE in us and through us.
This experience of living a life that expresses Him begins by first receiving Him. Not only in the work of being regenerated that He begins in us, but also in the many works that follow our salvation, that He continues to work in us. He first grows in us, before He can be expressed through us. He begins a transforming work in our lives where He begins to transform our lives in order to present Himself through us.
Practically that means that He begins to empty us from everything still occupying our personality that never was His intended design for us. He then fills our personality with His Personality (without removing who he made us to be, He simply wraps us into Himself). Suddenly we find the sweetness of Jesus being beamed through us from the inside, where there once lived an expression of the flesh, we now express the Glory of Christ! He does the same with our nature and with our character.
Where does it begin?
It begins in our willingness to allow Him to come and to so fill us that we may become the radiant expression of His Spirit from within us. This willingness from our side requires our “surrender”, a word we have become accustomed to over the last century or so. What that implies is that we will give ourselves to God daily as a living sacrifice to be changed, molded and transformed into what He desires us to be, and what He needs us to become in order for Him to possess us in a way that he can express Himself through us.
This process requires no more from us that the willingness to allow God to work in us, but it DOES require our willingness, not only to allow Him to work, but also to change!
As this process begins to unfold in us, we are changed from Glory to Glory, as more of the Spirit of God is mirrored in our lives, and as we are changed by His Glory in us, so we become mirrors of expressing Him in this world! He becomes visibly seen through our lives as His Nature, Character, and Personality is being expressed through us – We become ONE with Him, just as Jesus prayed and desired we would!
From the well of this transforming work of God springs forth a deep revelation of Himself in the most glorious walk with Him that can ever be explained on paper!
We come to KNOW HIM as Paul knew Him! We come to understand Who He truly is, not by mere knowledge, but in the experience of His Person, experiencing the beauty of His Living Personality, the depth of His Character and His Glory of His Nature!
This is God’s intended destiny for everyone He chooses to save! He wants us to know Him and to restore us to a unique walk and relationship with Him.
How about it?
Are you willing?
Do you desire to begin this journey with Him today? Well, what is stopping you? Dive right in and lose yourself in Him. Ask Him to come and to flood you with His Presence, to change whatever needs to change in you. Then become sensitive to His Holy Spirit as He begins to work in you, and to lead you in His work, showing you what He wants to change in you, in your habits and in your attitude. Allow Him to do so and continue to give yourself to be changed, and you will!
God bless you, as you do!
