The Normal Christian Life

I have been encouraged over the years to read the writings of Watchman Nee, a Chinese Christian from the mid 20th century. He led a house church movement in China and was greatly persecuted and ended up dying in prison around 1970, but many of his words are powerful and have had a great impact on my life. Here is something that I was reading this morning that I felt was profound:God makes it quite clear in his Word that he has only one answer to every human need - his Son, Jesus Christ. In all his dealings with us he works by taking us out of the way and substituting Christ in our place. The Son of God died instead of us for our forgiveness: he lives instead of us for our deliverence. So we can speak of two substitutions - a Substitute on the Cross who secures our forgiveness and a Substitute within who secures our victory. It will help us greatly, and save us from much confusion, if we keep constantly before us this fact, that God will answer all our questions in one way and one way only, namely, by showing us more of his Son.The Normal Christian Lifepage 12This is a powerful truth. In everything, it is all about Jesus and He is the One who holds my life together. How often I forget that fact! How often I run to other things or just try to be good or live a good life and forget that He is my strength, my power, my peace, and my life. The prevailing world view of this age is that life is all about me and all about what makes me happy. That God's greatest desire is that I be happy and that I do what makes me happy. This is a lie and it leads to much misery and ruin. If we are all doing what makes us happy, what if my "pursuit of happiness" starts to run into your "pursuit of happiness"? Then, one of us takes action against the other to get our own way and we end up hurting one another. God's way is for us to find our life in Him and allow Jesus to meet our needs. Then we will be free to serve and bless one another instead of trying to get our needs met from each other. We each serve one another and our life on this planet is enhanced by love and service instead of being destroyed through selfishness and competition. Only Jesus can provide what we need since He is our Creator and only He knows what we need, which is to be forgiven of our sins once and for all, and to be delivered from the power of sin that enslaves us. Then, we are free to love God and to love one another.

It sounds simple, but in reality it is pretty hard because we are sooooo selfish and because we feel like we are all alone and HAVE to get our own way. If we do not satisfy ourselves, we fear that we will never be satisfied. That is why the whole Christian life and all of the satisfaction that it brings is only accessed through faith in the unseen God who really can satisfy us with Himself. Faith is what pleases God because when we believe Him and His promises we are saying that He is enough - that He is all we need. This is a hard truth for us, because the world tells us that we need a million different things from a new car, to a new spouse, to a new pair of shoes. If we just had that thing, then we would be satisfied. If we would only turn to Jesus and let Him do in our life what only He can do, then we would cease striving and searching and finally be at rest.