"From God"

 

    Living for God requires living from God.

 

    "Without Me, ye can do nothing" (John 15:5).

 

    "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works" (Ephesians 2:10).

 

    Just as our Heavenly Father had to give us physical, earthly life in order that we might exist in the natural realm, so He must grant to us spiritual life in order that we might be "alive unto God" (Romans 6:11).  Just as He must give us breath in order to sustain our natural lives, so must He dwell within us by His Spirit in order to animate and empower our faithfulness.  Our calling as Christians involves the faith that believes in the promised presence and power of God, submitting our spiritual and natural faculties to Him in the confidence that He will faithfully enable our devotion.  "God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (II Corinthians 9:8).

 

    Our spiritual enemies do everything they can to discourage our confidence, pointing to past failures, present sense of weakness, and troubled thoughts about the future.  The choice is ever before us, in countless ways.  Will we believe the Bible's assurance concerning the promise of Christ's abundantly enabling presence in this moment of challenge and temptation?  Or will we believe our enemies' promptings to judge truth by our senses and natural understanding?  "Thus saith the Lord?"  Or, "Thus saith the world, the devil and the flesh?"  The answer of our hearts determines the course of our lives, both in the present moment, and throughout our days as we either grow in grace or stagnate in unbelief.

 

    Whether we know it, believe it, remember or forget it, the living God is the great reality of this and of every moment of our eternal existence.  Our spirits teem with a Life beyond life, indeed, with a life that has already passed through death and into undying resurrection.  The Apostle Paul prayed that believers would realize that the same "exceeding greatness" of power that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead now dwells in us (Ephesians 1:15-20).  Do we believe this in this vital hour of our existence, and in the context of whatever blessing, difficulty, opportunity, challenge, sense of strength or sense of weakness we presently experience?  We must.  The glory and will of God are at stake.  The peace and joy of our hearts are at stake.  The blessing of others is at stake.  And the appreciation of so great a gift that required so great a cost is at stake.  Our Savior died in forsakenness from His Father that we might live in faith from our Father.  He died so that in this moment we might affirm "the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe."  And He died so that we might live for God, from God.

 

"In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him."                                

 (I John 4:9)