Jesus is our Life

 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,  and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

When you believe the gospel, the Word, which is Jesus, the word of God, it changes you.  The gospel, repentance and faith is not just the way to begin the Christian life, it is the way to continue in it.

The gospel says you are complete in Him.  It says you are sanctified and justified.  It says you are righteous with the righteousness of Christ.  It says that when the Father looks at you He does not see your sin but sees the perfect record of Christ, His life.  His life is now your life.  Jesus lives in you and you are in Him.  It is His life that lives through you.  You are not your own.  Apart from Him you can do nothing.  

The gospel says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  The old has passed away.  You are a new creature in Christ.  It is Christ in you.

You may say but you don't know my sin.  No I don't but the Lord does and He says it is forgiven and remembered no more.  The gospel says we are much worse than we can ever imagine, but we are so much more loved and accepted than we could ever hope for.  We are one with Christ.  You are secure in Him.  God cannot turn away from you or it would be turning away from Himself.  He turned away, rejected Christ, that He would never, ever turn away from you.  The Son took your place.  You are loved with a tenderness of love that is beyond anything you can imagine or hoped for.  Nothing can separate you from the Love of God.  You are eternally His.  His Spirit seals it.  His Son accomplished it.  The Father chose you before the beginning of time knowing all there is to know about you.  More than you can possibly ever know about yourself.  For every one look at your sin take 10 looks at Christ.  At the cross.

The word of God has power.  Jesus is the Word of God.  Open your bible and begin reading.  Pray the Spirit will illuminate a passage for you.  Sometimes I will go to biblegateway.com and type in a word the Spirit puts on my heart or a question I might have, with a dominate word.  Then I go to that passage and read until something stands out to me or grips my heart.  I ask the Spirit to tell me what He is wanting to show me through this scripture.  How am I to change?  How it this passage of scripture showing me how to love God and to love others?  How it is to affect my relationship with God and others.  All of scripture points to the person of Jesus.  All of scripture points to loving God and others.

Listen, wait and be willing to hear what the Spirit has for you.  Allow Gods Word through the Spirit, to speak to your heart, to build up and encourage, to guide and to convict as well as to teach and counsel.  There is no circumstance, person, relationship, situation that the Word of God does not speak to.  Listen and wait.  Be still and Know who God is and who you are.  Let it cleanse you, heal you make you whole, it is Jesus, the very Word of God.  It is God breathed.

The Spirit is our counselor.  Jesus is our shepherd.  The Word of God is able to direct our paths and counsel our hearts through His Word.  It is able to bring us to repentance and faith. There is no circumstance in our lives that His Word does not and cannot speak to.  It is relevant for every day life.  It is alive and active.

Jesus is our life.  We try to find life apart from Him but He is our life.  He gives us the acceptance, love and value that we try to find in everything but Him.  He is the way, the truth and the life.  It is through His truth of who we are and through that personal relationship that we begin to lose ourselves and find ourselves in Him all at the same time.  It is through death that we find life.  It is through loosing that we gain.  It is through despairing of ourselves that we find who we really are and we find Him.  He finds us.  It is through weakness that we find His strength made perfect in us.  It is through being honest and vulnerable about who we are that we find change.  It is through being open about our sin, that we find repentance and the righteousness of Christ.  We lean and depend and trust Him when we have come to the end of our own resources, our own strengths, our own plans, our life.  He who losses His life for my sake shall find it.  

These are the truths of the gospel that are ours as a dearly beloved child of God.  Now all we have to do is believe it.  Then we will live out of it by leaning into Christ and allowing Him to live His life through us.  We love because He first loved us.