Impossible Life

 God has called us to an impossible life. We say we know that but we don't live like we do. A lot of this can be put down to bad theology and bad teaching. We think that we're given an example in Jesus Christ and that we're to strive to imitate His life and ways. That's impossible, but we're deterred from continuing to try. Jesus lived in the power of a supernatural life. To live as He lived, we must live in that life as well. We never will in our own strength. It comes only through the power of His Holy Spirit and the gift of His resurrection life.

John Piper, in his book, When I Don't Desire God, speaks of when God opened his eyes to the difference between the kind of life he'd been living and the life he'd been created for. He writes, "Manageable, duty defined, decision oriented, willpower Christianity seemed easy, and real Christianity had become impossible. The Christian life became impossible. That is, it became supernatural."

The life we were created for is impossible because we can't manage it, control it, or live within the boundaries of our own comfort zones. It is not a natural life at all. It's a supernatural one. Impossible, terrifying, dangerous, and one from which our flesh will flee from at all times. It can't be lived out within the limits of our understanding, but only with the intimate connection to the One who is the Author of wisdom, understanding, discernment, and power. It is the life Christ lived and still lives. It's the life He calls us to, made us for. What's keeping us from it? What's keeping you from it?

Columnist Barbara Wentroble wrote, "Too often we live not out of who we truly are in Christ, but out of diseased (fallen) feelings, attitudes, and images of self that are not real." We live bound by chains and lies about ourselves, fed to us by the world and the father of lies. Lies about ourselves and our God. The result is we settle for a life that we believe is possible. A life that results in, at best, mediocrity. A life of lukewarmness. A half-life. His people are to know nothing of such a life. We're called to a life out of our control and fully in His. He knows where it is going and we trust Him even when we don't. We're at peace, because we not only KNOW that He is good, we are experiencing that He is good. We've learned, as Chris Tiegreen says, to ignore the devil's lies about His character and trust in His heartbeat.

His Word tells us to "delight ourselves in Him." Delight is an experience that demands our emotions and our being. Piper says that "God is glorified in His people by the way we experience Him, not merely by the way we think about Him." We don't live out our lives in Him based on logic and reason. That will always make the impossible life impossible. We His life out in and through our hearts, where He abides, and from where His wondrous, miraculous, and abundant life flows out from us. Lord, may it be so for us!

In His Word we're asked, "How then shall we live?" How then shall you live? How shall I? Will it be the controlled kind of half-life that has been, or will it be in the fullness of His life? Out of control, impossible, supernatural. It's center is not in our heads but in our hearts. Hearts intimately joined with His.

Blessings,
Pastor O