This is our Christian life and our church life – a life in which we daily learn – through many failures and some victories – to deny our natural life and live by the divine life. Once we received the Lord as our Savior and our life, He came into us as Another Life – the Divine Life!
Now this life needs to grow, develop, and LIVE in us. The Lord wants to live in us!
Paul could say that for him to live was Christ (Phil. 1:21) and it is no longer him who lived but Christ lived in him (Gal. 2:20) – but what about us? What about our daily practical living, in all the things that we do every day and in the way we conduct ourselves: is Christ living in us, or are WE the ones who are living?
Paul encourages us to take the Lord as our pattern – to live the same kind of life that He did, as the One who opened the way and He cut the way into glory! What kind of life did the Lord Jesus live? How did He live and behaved, how did He conduct Himself and what did He express?
In all the Gospels we see that even though the Lord Jesus was perfect, having a perfect humanity and being flawless in His human living, He still denied Himself and lived by the Father, unto the Father, and for the Father.
The Lord Jesus chose to put aside His perfect sinless humanity and live not by His natural life (as perfect as it was), but by the divine life. In everything He said and did, He expressed the Father, spoke the Father’s words, sought the glory of the Father, lived the Father, and did everything for the Father.
He lived by the Father’s life within Him, daily denying Himself… He was not crucified at the end of His human life once for all; rather, He daily lived a crucified life, taking up His cross daily and living by the Father’s life. This is the kind of life our Forerunner lived… – and we follow Him organically by allowing Him to live in us.
But there is a question:
What does it mean for us practically to deny our natural life and live by the divine life?
Here are some very good answers some of the saints gave me on facebook when I asked this question:
- Say ‘Yes’ to Jesus, ‘No’ to Satan 🙂
- Practically? Confess. Apply the blood. Seek God in the Word. Call on the Lord. This in the midst of the chaos of life. Don’t look back.
- Pick up the rod and speak to the rock. That is, recognize who it is that is living, stand against that natural feeling, that natural inclination, that innate desire to act, or say, or be and call from deep within, not as a ritual, not as an old habit, but from a desperate need (like a dying man in a desert thirsts for one drop of crystal clear pure liquid H2O), call and ask that the living water would gush up and pour forth. Our living then is no longer our own, but it is the blossom of the divine life.
- Unceasingly pray. Calling on the Lord’s name while doing the mundane things in life, like washing the dishes. Do we wash the dishes by our natural life or by the divine life within us? If we enjoy the Lord while doing these things, we automatically deny our natural man and live by the divine life. But one thing Ron Kangas said which was very enlightening. We can only deny the self, natural man, etc only when know what is the self, natural man, etc. For this we need the Lord’s enlightening. One time I was enlightened by the Lord to realize that I was standing in line at a love feast in my self. I wasn’t doing anything sinful. I wasn’t complaining. Just waiting to pass through the line and get my food. Then the Lord shined and said “You are in your self.” And I responded by saying softly “O Lord Jesus.” Instantly, I realized that my self was crucified and the living water from my spirit was flowing into my being. Praise the Lord for the compound, life-giving Spirit who the pnuematic Christ in our spirit!
- Renewing our mind is crucial! Even though we think in our soulish life so many times each day we really need to deny this and be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12 v1). If our mind is not renewed we lie vulnerable to the attack of the enemy and allow negative things to enter in which block our contact and fellowship with the Body. So if we’re prone to wonder or wander in our natural life we need to enter into the divine life by turning to our spirit and the assurances of the word: Isaiah 26 v3 and 1 Peter 1 v13. Amen!
AMEN! For me personally, I just say Amen to all the saints, and I want to daily be learning to deny myself by calling on the name of the Lord!
Sometimes you feel that RIGHT NOW you need to turn to your spirit to be saved + live by the Lord’s life, but many times you don’t do it…. yet the Lord exposes us, shines on us, and even though we may not turn there and then, we become more desperate before the Lord and we realize how much a failure we are…. How much we live by ourselves and we forget about the Lord!
Yet He is faithful to come to us, He is faithful to seek to be one with us and live in us… and He seeks little openings, little times, in which He lives in us and we allow Him to live by simply calling on His name, turning our heart to Him, and fellowshipping with Him.
Our life is a continual process of learning to turn to our spirit in all kinds of circumstances, situations, places, things we do, etc. We learn to turn until we’re fully living in our spirit!
Lord, keep us in our spirit today! Teach us how to deny ourselves and live by Your life! Thank You, Lord, for the divine life in us! May it be no longer us who lives but this Wonderful Christ living in us! Make today, Lord, the day when we turn continually and allow You to live in us! Teach us to turn, and keep us turning to our spirit!
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