Do you remember how we talked about giving your stressful circumstances to Jesus? How we mentally tucked that problem and all the stray ends into a box and wrapped it carefully, sealed it, and tied it securely with super strong nylon cords? Then, we watched from outside with our eyes closed, while inside we met Jesus, gave Him the box, and then watched Him walk away with our “problem” tucked under His arm.

This note came:

What a blessed release, relief, it is to be able to take my problem-whatever it is-my struggle, my pain, my fear-to wrap it up in a box and tie it tightly inside so it can’t ever get “out” again, and hand it over to Jesus. But, Anabel, I don’t see Him walking away with it, because He never, never, never walks away from me. No. I see Him hanging on to my box and whenever I think about the problem again, I see Him right beside me with MY package still in HIS hands. I gladly leave it with Him. And He is strong enough to carry as many “packages” as I need to place in His hands

Praise be to almighty God who loves me-insignificant me? Hardly. I am very significant to Him-I’ve talked to Him about all of my problems-I love Him that much and He loves me that much.

Life in this world is messed up. It is marked by stress and struggle. I see it on a daily basis in my office as I listen to the heartbreak, regret, anger and disillusionment that people express about their lives and relationships.

Paul says that this struggle is not what it appears to be at first glance. He says we do not fight with what our eyes can see and what our ears can hear. Instead, he says that our struggle is with the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.¹

Jesus knew about this struggle. He was fully aware of the enemy’s tactics. He was aware that Satan would wait for opportune times to tempt Him.² Of course Jesus’ opportune time was while He was hungry, tired and in the middle of a literal desert. Our opportune times might be like His or they might be when we face tough circumstances at work, at home or in our relationships.

Recently I experienced my own opportune time. I could identify with Paul. I was tempted to be discouraged by conflicts without and swayed by fears within.³

Fortunately, He gave me the way to escape. ⁴ The Holy Spirit gently reminded me that I was simply facing momentary light affliction.⁵

The affliction gives me an opportunity to realize that I don’t have the resources to withstand the pressure. I was never meant to be able to. I was created to be weak so that the “surpassing greatness of the power” in me “will be of God and not from” myself.⁶

While my afflictions will undoubtedly continue through the rest of my earthly life, I rest in the assurance that Christ’s great power in me is enough. As a result, He gets the glory and I get His rest. There is no better way to live in this messed up world!

¹ Ephesians 6:12
² Luke 4:13
³ 2 Corinthians 7:5
⁴ 1 Corinthians 10:13
⁵ 2 Corinthians 4:17
⁶ 2 Corinthians 4:7

It’s presumptuous of any person to think he can emulate the life of Christ. God doesn’t want to “help” you live on earth any more than He wanted to “help” you get saved. He did it all for you then: He’s made provision through Christ to do it all for you now. This way God, not you, gets the honor (glory). Salvation is all of God, nothing of man. Guys, the Christian life is to be experienced in exactly the same way it’s begun. He wants to do it all for you, through you. In this way He gets just as much glory (credit) for saving you from the hell of life as He does for saving you from the hell of death, and He gets to build the intimate, bonding relationship with you which He longs for. He died to attain this relationship with you! Imagine that! Please don’t continue in your independent self-sufficiency, naively believing that this is pleasing to the Father, that He is proud of your strength. He’s covered this in His love letter: “They will be held guilty, they whose strength is their god” (Habakkuk 1:11). Your personal strength is His enemy. It keeps you from intimate fellowship with Him.

The boss buzzed you on the intercom and told you to come to his office. He said that the report you had submitted for the quarter was unacceptable, and he gave you one week to rewrite it. That’s the sort of hell on earth that Christ has saved you from. As you’re sitting there with your heart in your throat, you’re to think, Lord Jesus, I’m so glad that I don’t have to do this rewrite. You are my life and this is Your baby. Thank You for saving me from this. You think that concept in a micro second. Then you say, “Yes, sir, Mr. Mulligan. I’ll do my best. The problem will be fixed. You can count on it.” Then you think, Whew, Lord! You really do have a problem here. I’m so glad that I don’t have to do this rewrite. Yes! The burden is the Lord’s!

Afterward, you burn the midnight oil, highly motivated as your hands sometimes fly over, sometimes labor over the keyboard of your computer, trusting that Christ is doing this report for you, through you on a moment-by-moment basis. Yes! You don’t go fishing and wait till you feel the Spirit of Christ take over and carry you to the computer terminal. You go sit at the keyboard. You save the document to a working file and then begin the rewrite job. However, your faith is saying, “OK, Lord, where do we begin? I don’t have a clue.” This, my friend, is trusting Christ as life through you, by faith. Have you missed this piece in the salvation equation? Christ as life comes right along with the package that you acquired when you got saved. Many of us have trusted Jesus as Savior; we’ve trusted Him as Lord, but may have never trusted Him as life until we meet something which is absolutely beyond our ability. Trusting Christ as life is “[casting] your burden upon the Lord” (Psalm 55:22)-a command, not an option. God commands you to shove the burden of living on earth squarely onto the broad shoulders of your Savior and to keep piling it on Him moment-by-moment. Gang, this may sound like a cop-out to you, but it’s normal. You were not saved to “carry your own weight.” That is the devil’s idea. Not only is this not noble, it is sin to carry your own weight! It’s independence. God says, “Whatever [as in breathing God's air] is not from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23b).

There was a time in my pilgrimage when I breezed by this verse, assuming that it referred to my future in heaven. You see, I concentrated solely on the death of Jesus as the payment for my sins, never realizing that He accomplished much more for me than that glorious act. The phrase I just used-”much more”-came right out of the verse. I was unintentionally minimizing a significant part of Jesus’ finished work. I believed that the reference to His life related only to a future heaven instead of our life on earth as well. I put all my doctrinal weight on His death and none on His life, and I believe that many Christians are making that same mistake.

You’ll agree that the first half of this verse-”reconciled to God through the death of His Son”-references Christ’s death as the way God saved you from everlasting hell. Then Paul writes, “much more . . .” You’ve gotta love those two words. God is not given to superlatives. After all, if you’ve never told a lie and you’re incapable of ever doing so (Titus 1:2), your yes means yes and your no means no. So when God uses words or phrases like “much more,” we ought to get ready for an important announcement. Here it is: “Much more, having been reconciled [a guarantee of heaven], we shall be saved by His life.” Saved by His life? Saved from what? We are already saved from hell by the death of Christ in the first part of the verse, so what is this “much more” we get saved from by the life of Christ?

His life through you saved you from bearing the circumstances of living on earth! That’s right. Christ’s death saved you from hell below the earth; Christ’s life saves you from hell upon the earth.

God says in the verses above that your life is “hidden.” This means that you must see this via your spiritual eyes, by faith. It’s fine if you understand it, but you can obey it regardless of whether you understand it or not. If you need more understanding, you can address God: “Sir, if there is something here that I need to understand, show it to me. I’m not simply curious. I want to know so I can have a better relationship with You.” Paul writes, “The life which I now live in the flesh [in the body] I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20). For years I knew I would die embracing my faith in Christ, but I never knew I was to live by that same faith in Him. Jesus said, “I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Somehow the key is to live like the branch on a vine lives, depending upon the life of that vine. Now hold that thought.

- by Bill Gillham

There is so much more to your salvation than a one-time experience which guarantees heaven. Living the Christian life is experienced via using the same faith by which you got saved. It is experiencing a moment-by-moment, intimate, personal relationship with Christ who indwells you-living “in vital union with [Him]” (Colossians 2:6 TLB). In addition to trusting Christ as Savior and Lord, God wishes that you would trust Christ as life through you to face each day for you. God says it like this in Galatians 3:1,3: “You foolish [Christian], who has bewitched you? … Having begun by the Spirit [God's power and grace, by faith], are you now being perfected by the flesh [depending upon your own resources-human effort]?”

- by Bill Gillham

By letting Christ express His life through us on a moment-by-moment basis, we experience the overcoming, abundant life that Jesus spoke of (John 10:10). Many Christians have taken the independent, do-it-yourself exit off God’s “freeway.” Cordless Christianity explains why many Christians experience unexciting or perhaps defeated lives. It explains everything from the so-called male mid-life crisis to depression, sheer boredom to anxiety attacks, passivity to dominance, abrasiveness to “wimping out,” the workaholic to the sofa spud, legalism to hedonism, perfectionism to slovenliness, etc. These are all manifestations of living in the power of human flesh. Jesus Christ is the only One who ever lived the Christian life, and I have found that by letting Him express His life through us, by faith, we experience the Christian life as God intends.

- by Bill Gillham

We can do this with many words in our modern day tongue like love.  I love my wife, I love a hamburger and I love God are all true statements yet the definition of love is different in all three cases.  There are times when I say “I love you” to my wife when I truly mean, “I am amazed and charmed by your beauty”.  Now what if she takes that as the same way I mean, “I love a hamburger”?  To be terrific we must be specific and there are times when we need to say more then “I love you” because the ears that it fall on might just need us to be specific what we are saying.  Now let’s step back into some modern day Christianese.

Grace has become a buzzword in Christianity and we read it 131 times in the New Testament alone, most of the time passing right over it because we’ve become inoculated to the definition and power of the word.  Most of us associate grace with God and the process of salvation.  Grace then gets pigeonholed into being about salvation and therefore those heathen need grace and we have received it and are no longer in need of it.

Now Grace is many times defined as “Unmerited favor” or an “Undeserved gift”.  Many have even sought to turn it into an acronym – God’s Riches At Christ Expense.  And we know we need grace in order to “be saved”.  But what if we missed the true meaning of Grace.  What if we unknowingly have commoditized the gospel of grace and it is been brought back under the power of a religious system that we now call a “relationship”.

Grace is defined not only by the end result of it, which is “unmerited favor”, but we need to understand the means that it comes.  Thayers defines it as “the merciful kindness by which God, exerts his holy influence upon souls”.  So the conduit or means of grace is God Himself, in His tender loving kindness offering us Himself and His influence over our very being”.  This is a moment-by-moment need of the soul of a person in order for them to experience real communion with God.  Grace is not only needed for salvation but it is what we now live by, His grace is always sufficient.  Titus 2:11-12 says this very succinctly:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

Notice it is that same grace in salvation that we need to live by, that actually comes along side us to live the Christian life.  It is a moment-by-moment experiencing of His presence within us that leads us through life.  This is the kind of closeness that union (1 Corinthians 6:17) brings with our God, this is the God of relationships.  So next time you see the word Grace simply put the definition in and begin to see the relational way that God guides you.