Orange Moon Tuesday, October 24, 2023 "The Life of Our Lives"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

"The Life of Our Lives"

    

       "God gave Himself to us when we believed, in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit who reveals the character, nature, and way of the Lord Jesus in our hearts."           

   "This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life" (I John 5:11-12).

    

    "Christ is our life" (Colossians 3:4).

    "This life" must become "our life."  God made human hearts for the presence of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  He does not account us as truly, completely, and genuinely alive until it becomes personally true that "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father" (Galatians 4:6).

    Life, as defined by God, begins when we receive by faith the saving grace of the Lord Jesus, which results in His living presence becoming the very Life of our lives.  God gave Himself to us when we believed, in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit who reveals the character, nature, and way of the Lord Jesus in our hearts.  "To live is Christ" declared the Apostle Paul of the life that can be found nowhere else, in nothing else, and in no one else (Philippians 1:21).  "Ye are the temple of God… the Spirit of God dwelleth in you" (I Corinthians 3:16).  

   The inestimable glory of such reality can only be presently known in limited terms as we "walk by faith, not by sight" (II Corinthians 5:7).  Indeed, the God beyond all measure who "even the Heaven of heavens cannot contain" dwells within every born again believer in the Lord Jesus (II Chronicles 2:6).  We will never fully know the wonder of such grace, and certainly in our present lives, even the most godly among us barely touch the hem of the Lord's garment regarding His living, indwelling presence.  Every Christian can, however, know more than we presently realize that "God is in you, of a truth" (I Corinthians 14:25).

    Paul referred to "Christ in you" as "the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:27).  He did not confine such hope to the next life, when we shall know God's glories far better than we do in the present.  No, the hope of glory, the hope of knowing that the Lord Jesus dwells and walks in us, must fortify and fuel our hearts in the moments to come of this day (II Corinthians 6:16).  We are not merely ourselves as believers in the Lord Jesus.  We are ourselves, as inhabited and empowered by the Spirit of Christ.  The realization of such truth is life changing.  The ongoing remembrance and affirmation of such truth is also life imparting as by faith, the Lord who indwells our spirits becomes manifested in our souls and bodies.  "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.  But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall quicken (enliven) your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you" (Romans 8:1-11).  

    We can live this day as if the Lord Jesus does not dwell and walk in us.  We can "neglect so great salvation" (Hebrews 2:3).  What a waste, most certainly the saddest of all disregards.  As Jacob said at Peniel, after awakening to realize what  - Who - he had missed, "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I knew it not!" (Genesis 28:16).  May we not have to confess such a sad ignorance at the end of this day.  The Christ who died for us no less lives in us as the very Life of our lives.  God gave Himself to us when we believed, in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  He furthermore grants the promise that such a hope, "the hope of glory," can be fulfilled in this day as we believe and submit our hearts to the greatest of all gifts that came to us in the moment of our new birth.  The gift of Himself, the living presence of the Lord Jesus - this is the Life of our lives.  There is no other, and our Father would have us to know how very near He has drawn to us in His Son, and by His Spirit.

"He is thy life."

(Deuteronomy 30:20)

"And the glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one, I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one."

(John 17:22-23)

Weekly Memory Verse

   Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

 

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