To Live is Christ.........

Galatians 2:20 – I am crucified with Christ, yet I live. Not I, but Christ who lives within me.

I’ve known this verse for nearly all my life, I’ve quoted it, memorized it, and, less times than I should have, lived it. For some reason I was sitting in my office, being bored and I just started thinking, “Galatians 2:20”. I couldn’t even remember what that verse said. I knew that I knew it. I knew that it was a very familiar verse, but at that moment I just couldn’t remember what it said. So I looked it up. “For I am crucified with Christ, yet I live. Not I, but Christ who lives within me.” I am crucified with Christ…….does that mean I have to die?? Well, when it comes to the sin in my life, my ideas of how life is supposed to be, my dreams, and my selfishness……yes, I have to kill those things. In this way, I and the things that I live for everyday, are crucified with Christ. But wait…….. “yet I live!” So while I was doing all this dying to myself, I forgot the most empowering phrase…….I still live. I can still have an abundant life as long as I remember that it is NOT I, but Christ who lives within me. I now live for him………every waking moment.

So, as I am sitting here pondering this thought I get the urge to read…….which is not like me, I hate to read! I just happen to have this little devotional book sitting on my desk and I pick it up. I do the poking drill, you know, where you pick up a book open it to some random page without looking and poke a spot on that page……….from that spot you begin to read. When I did this I came upon a little section called “A Breath of Fresh Air”. God is so amazing in the way he leads us day to day. I would like to quote some of this section that I read:

“For many years I was troubled by the observation that even after receiving Christ, so many people live in various degrees of defeat. Why, I wondered, was there so little love among many believers? And particularly, why did I so often struggle with my own sins and shortcomings? There were occasions when I was inconsiderate and self-centered, even though I knew that the Spirit of God lived within me.”

“I came to understand that sin steals back into our lives, even though Jesus has completely conquered it. He has removed the deadly venom from the serpent, Satan. Though defeated at the cross, that snake is still capable of biting if we do not keep our distance. I have seen it so often in my life as well as in the lives of people I know and love. We know Christ but we struggle with sin. Paul spoke of the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit in Galatians 5:16,17:
‘So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires
of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary
to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature.
They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what
you want.’
God’s loving presence is much like the air we breathe. We cannot live – truly live – without it.”

“We dwell in a very polluted world, and we breath in many unhealthy things every day. Often, by watching television or listening to music, we breathe in foul things from our world’s culture. Spending time around certain people who are poor influences, we take in polluted ideas. We need to exhale the pollution of sin, and inhale the goodness of God’s forgiveness and grace. When you sin by committing a deliberate act of disobedience, spiritual breathing restores the fullness of God’s Holy Spirit in your life. Spiritual breathing is simply exhaling the impure and inhaling the pure.”

“This one concept has enriched my life like no other. I discovered that there was a way for me to take my sins and lay them before God even as I struggled with them. Our spiritual lungs are choking on foul air, and we do not even realize it. We must remember the height from which we’ve fallen – up on that spiritual mountaintop, where the air is pure and clean. Then we must take a deep breath of air administered by God’s Spirit, and turn back toward the heights we would like to reach once more.”