by
KATHLEEN BEARD
The number one thing on God’s order is not the battle between good and evil; it is my glory fighting against His glory. The purpose of life is: To lose my kingdom, my glory, my image, my strength, my righteousness. God will allow us to be offended until the thing that can be offended is offended to death (Michael Wells).
I not Christ = Unbeliever
I and Christ = New Believer
Christ and I = Miserable Believer
Christ not I = Free Believer
God has recently been “stirring me up by way of reminder” (2 Peter 3:1). The teaching, discipling and training He poured into me during the tenure of John’s illness needed to be refreshed. It was the education that He used to save my mind from going into emotional overload—those times when I looked down into that black abyss and wondered if I would ever recover. He gathered up my thoughts and emotions and put them back in order. He saved me. This was not salvation from eternal separation, it was salvation from the hell of my daily life.
And now, He is instructing me to collect my writings and the writings of those whose wisdom was “from above” once more and refresh my soul for the trials of today. I will attempt to compile some of these gems of wisdom to write on these pages, although the words will only have meaning for the sojourner whose life is desperately clutching for truth in a world gone awry. It won’t have meaning for those who are in control or who have it together. I was one of those at the beginning of this journey. Now I can say with the apostle Paul, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9, 10). Where in the world would you find such advice—rejoice in your weakness! It is foolish to the world, but for me it is powerful. Being weak—I can do that part!
Where is the life Jesus promised? Why is it such a struggle to maintain the Christian life? Why are so many believers still in such bondage? “Having your sins forgiven doesn’t tell you one thing about how to life the life. Most of us go from believing that salvation is a free gift from God and rejoicing in that, and then we move into thinking that we have to work to sanctify ourselves. We begin going to the “how-to” classes, reading the “how-to” books, all in an attempt to become sanctified. This becomes works-based religion. . . .You can’t live the Christian life. Christ is in you and he will live the life—not ‘He will help me live the life’, but he will live the life. That’s good news. I can let Him live the life. I can do that.” (The Rest of the Gospel, Dan Stone, p. 18, 23).
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