Receiving Christ...the way it should be.

  Let me get right into it...

¹⁷ So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. ¹⁸ They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. ¹⁹ Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

 ²⁰ That, however, is not the way of life you learned ²¹ when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. ²² You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to *put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; ²³ to be made new in the attitude of your minds; ²⁴ and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. 

- Ephesians 4:17-24

*To me.. this sums up what Christ opened up for us. We put off our "old man" of  and put on the "new man." 

Let me throw out an analogy to you. 

 A friend and great man had recently been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. For those interested in reading his blog and don't know him. 

Anyways...he just went through chemotherapy to kill all of the leukemic cells in his bone marrow. 

They are looking at doing a bone marrow transplant as soon as he has a "clean" biopsy. Which he has now. 

Okay. Fun part. 

In the beginning, God created man. He made us to walk with him and to be with  Him. 

 When Sin entered our hearts...it was like leukemia in our cells. It fed off the functions of our being. It corrupted what God had made sacred. 

 So the great physician sent a piece of Himself to us.  Jesus Christ. 

He came to heal us from our illness.

The cure was inside of Him. 

The catch was.. we had to die.

The "good" along with the bad.  

  Many have tried to just inject their old self with this new  life.They say that all you  need is a little of Him to heal you.

Trying to have Christ but never change.

They convince others that they can do the same, going on with their lives, but they remain sick.

  

And often unless they become truly crucified and buried with Christ( kill all of their being), the sickness will be rampant throughout them. 

 Our DNA has to be completely destroyed (clean biopsy)and His DNA (like a bone marrow transplant for a patient) replaces ours. We cease to be... completely, apart from Christ. This is not to say that the old self will try hard to fight even to the end, but we would be Christ in the earth!

 We would be healed from our sickness...what's more. WE COULD HEAL OTHERS! 

A Meditation

When vision fadeth
And the sense of things
and powers dissolve 
like colors in the wind
And no more can I bring any offering 
Nor an ordered prayer....


Then like a great wind from paradise...


Falleth a healing word upon mine ear.


Let the lifting up of my hands be as the evening offering


THE LORD DOES HEAR


Amy Carmichael

Fragrance and fruit

I'm writing this post so late at night..well it's 1:45 in the morning, so I hope it is coherent. 


Song of Solomon 

¹³ Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates 
   with choice fruits, 
   with henna and nard, 
 ¹⁴ nard and saffron, 
   calamus and cinnamon, 
   with every kind of incense tree, 
   with myrrh and aloes 
   and all the finest spices. 




These are the words of the Lover to the Beloved. The scent of the beloved attracts the Lover. 

Christ created in each of us a garden. A place in which we can walk with him in the cool of the day. 


A tabernacle of the Most High. 


In this place, fragrant aromas are wafted out. They bring many into the place of worship. Is your life fragrance Love? The aroma that comes  from a drying, crushing, and a burning in most cases of your very being. 


 Through those trying times in which Christ seems to have turned his back, you feel pressure from all sides closing in, and those times you feel absolutely spent. Out of those times, the greatest fragrance can come. Those times give us something to draw out of both while in the circumstance and the fragrant offering afterwards. 




The fruit we bear by taking in the light of the Son, is transformed into the nourishment of ourselves and others.This is a perspective of a good friend of mine who does that subject justice. (From-sunlight-to-food-or-aspiring-to-be-more-of-a-vegetable)




To  deny the process of converting Christ into a living example causes us to shrivel up.  Our life is connected to His. When we called on Him to enter our lives to be like Him..He makes us Him on earth.


Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 


Meaning now. We must now be Him on earth. Feeding His sheep and bringing the world back to Him.







OK.
  
That makes you cringe a little.


 Good. 


I myself feel my flesh rise up against it many a time. This body in it's self is about preserving the self. But I am owned by Christ. He is inside the garden and is illumining the darkness of my soul and causing a lot of shaking.






But also don't forget that God's mercies are new every morning. That you are His delight and He created you for a great purpose.(Not always grand in our eyes, for we are made of dirt!) Also most of all He lived and died so that you would have a path to walk out. 




I hope that you are encouraged more to be a fragrant tree that brings delight to the nostrils of the Lover.