What did my look like before the awareness of the Crucified Life?
- I was indulgent and unrestrained. Marked by these in some degree or another: anger, temper, gossip, discord, frustration, anxiety, worry, harshness, meanness, doubt, unbelief, rebellion, and disobedience.
- My life existed without spiritual sweetness: no aroma; no magnetism; no authenticity; no glow; no victory; no rest; no fruit; no abiding; no surrender; no death to me.
- For many of us on the outside all looks in order: our Christian dress, attendance, service, offerings, praise, prayers, devotions.
- But all emanating from self-conforming and performing of the Christian culture.
- We have replaced serving the world with serving God believing that in that service comes true spiritual growth, fruit and rewards.
- In other words, “The show had no glow.”
What does a life look like after the Crucified Life?
- One full of agape love, joy, calm delight, peace of mind and spirit, enduring patience toward self and others, softness in manner , acting benevolently toward others without any thought of return, confidence and assurance in God, humility and genuine meekness, the ability to be spirit controlled in conversation and in the necessities and needs of life and in one’s relationship to God.
What has the crucified life done for me?
- It has addressed one of the elusive questions on the Christian life, that being “How does one know that they are living a successful Christian life?”
- It has addresses a very personal root problem in my past that being rejection.
- It has placed the fruit of the Christian life in its proper biblical perspective.
- It has freed me from the bondage of human gifting and has placed the results upon the Lord who fills, directs, empowers and engineers His work in and through me.
- It has revealed a biblical nature of man that answers many related questions about our old life without Christ and the new life in Christ.
- It has biblically provided both an objective and a subjective foundation to the nature of man.
- It has provided a platform of transformation that transcends language, culture, generational placement and ethnic origin.
- It has reinforced the salvation side of the cross by reminding us of the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It has also clarified the struggle of a self-identified life that can only be subdued by the reality of identification with Christ on the cross.
- It has unveiled the crucified life of a believer as being grafted into the person and life of Christ and that the life of Jesus Christ can and should be appropriated and lived through a believer who is in Christ voluntarily, devotionally, practically and experientially.
[Write Pastor Richard Scheer via the contact page. Explore these themes in the free Treasures of Truth course.]
Revitalizing Pastors 