The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…
"Depending and Deferring"
"The Christ who perfectly trusted His Father, and who perfectly obeyed His will, now lives in us to empower our own life of depending and deferring."
During His earthly lifetime, the Lord Jesus Christ depended on His Father and deferred to His will.
"I live by the Father… I came down from Heaven not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me" (John 6:57; 38).
The same Christ now lives in born again believers, imparting the same disposition of depending and deferring.
"Because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).
"It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Philippians 2:13).
We will not attain to the perfection of trust and obedience our Lord exhibited while living amid the challenges of a fallen world. We can and must, however, grow in our response to God the Father, as exemplified by God the Son, and empowered by God the Holy Spirit. "Walk even as He walked," commands the Apostle John. "I will dwell in them and walk in them" promises the Lord Jesus (I John 2:6; II Corinthians 6:16). We can be sure in this present moment that our Father calls us to depend and to defer. We can also be sure that the Spirit of God moves within us to reveal "Christ, the power of God" as the very Life of our lives, whereby we can walk in faith and faithfulness (I Corinthians 1:24). As our Lord experienced during His earthly sojourn, much challenge confronts us regarding the dependence and deference to which God calls us. Nothing, however, begins to compare with the "the power that worketh in us," or the truth that "Greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world" (Ephesians 3:20; I John 4:4).
In time of our most perceived weakness, wherein darkness, emptiness, and chaos seems to rule, the Spirit of God moves within us no less than He did upon the primordial waters of old in creation (Genesis 1:2). As God's "new creatures," He works within us to reveal the light, fullness, and form of Christ (II Corinthians 5:17). He works in us to depend and to defer. This moment offers blessed opportunity to believe the truth of our Lord's vital presence and working within us, whatever conditions, circumstances, and situations may lie before us. "We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us" (Romans 8:37). Yes, the Christ who perfectly trusted His Father and who perfectly obeyed His will, now lives in us to empower our own life of depending and deferring. As we look to His example and to His enabling, the Lord Jesus will once again walk the earth, this time in us, and revealing yet again that "The just shall live by faith," and "We shall live with Him by the power of God" (Romans 1:17; II Corinthians 13:4).
"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
(Galatians 2:20)
Weekly Memory Verse
For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of God toward you.
(II Corinthians 13:4)
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