Thursday, May 7, 2009

What Jesus Showed Us

Following is another quote from Andrew Murray’s writing, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You”

What was the object of Christ’s coming from Heaven? It was to show us the possibility and blessedness of being a man with God living His life in Him. We teach children by means of pictures and models. When God’s Son became man, He lived a perfect human life – “made like us in all things” – and told us it was by the power of the Father dwelling in Him. “I do nothing of Myself – the Father in Me doeth the work.” Here is no question of abstract thought or deep theology – here is a true man, sleeping, hungering, wearied, tempted, weeping, suffering like ourselves, telling us that the Father dwells in Him, and that this is the secret of His perfect blessed life. He felt it all just as we feel it, but He could do and bear all because the Father was in Him. He showed us how a man can live, and how He would enable us to live.

Murray says that Jesus could do and bear all things because the Father was in Him. Hmmmmm. Was it that the Father was in Him or was it that He KNEW the Father was in Him and He lived out of that reality? Jesus told the Pharisees that the kingdom of God was within them. That does not sound past tense or future tense. It sounds kind of in the now, don’t you think? The kingdom of God is within you. You just need to realize it?

There is a saying that Keith used as his signature for a while…. "We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey”

So, if spirit is our true essence, where did that spirit come from? Did God make us out of nothing or did God make us out of himself. And if we came from him, then isn’t the Father in us too? Hasn’t the Father always been in us? Wasn’t the Father in them? Weren’t they too spiritual beings on a human journey…all from the same source…all from the Father?

I am not claiming to know the answers…but I certainly have no problem coming up with the questions…

And one more question. What is stopping us from living in the realm/mindset/state of being that Jesus lived in? Following a quote from Preston Eby….Part Four Of The Kingdom Of God

“The realm of the new birth is the realm of sonship.  It is the realm where Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived and moved and had His being.  Not that He was born again, for He had never sinned nor died and needed not the regeneration of ordinary men.  But He lived and moved  in the REALM OF SONSHIP full and complete.  He lived and moved  in the REALM OF THE KINGDOM and opened up the way for us to enter in.  As Moses led Israel to Kadesh Barnea where they could actually see the promised land but through unbelief turned back to the wilderness, so Jesus led the whole world to a sort of spiritual Kadesh Barnea where the glory of the Kingdom came into full view only to be lost sight of in a spiritual wilderness in which we have wandered for almost two thousand years.

Hmmmmmmmm…..2000 years is a long time to be lost.

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