Being the Person God Wants Me to Be - Part 3

                                                     
Does the Bible give us any direction on how to solve what at times looks like a spiritual riddle?
Consider these passages:
            1. Jesus said we must abide in Him if we want to bear fruit. (John 15) The branch only abides; the vine does the producing. But don’t forget the pruning, not something popular with most of us!
            2. Jesus also instructed His disciples to ‘wait until they were endued with power from on high.’ The result: ‘you will BE my witnesses.’ The action follows the empowerment, not vice versa.

             3. “I can do all things THROUGH Christ which (or Who) strengthens me.” Phil 2:13. We all too often interpret this to mean we should place an emphasis on the I CAN DO….when that is the RESULT of depending on Christ. HE is the one doing the ‘strong behavior.’ I must do the depending. HE does the empowering. The truth here is THROUGH CHRIST is how I do all things….It is Jesus within me that is empowering me.
               4. Paul learned the key and shared it when he responded to Christ’s words recorded in 2 Cor 12:9, “Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness.” Paul got the message: “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” This is a powerful message we seem to have missed. When we accept our weakness and allow Christ to empower us, then and only then, can we BE and Do what is pleasing to Him! We forget that we have the indwelling presence of God’s Spirit in our hearts. Did you ever wonder why He was given to us? Of course, we like His comfort, His teaching us about God, etc., but do we realize that His main job is to create the life of Jesus within us, to make us BE and Do what is acceptable to God? He wants to BE what we can never BE! Our job? Let Him. We are merely the vessel of clay within which dwells a divine treasure.

     5.  Jesus told the woman at the well the key to what we are struggling to understand. Oh, yes, we know that we need Jesus to be saved, but look at the passage closer. ‘Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (John 4). Recorded in John 7:38-39 is more clarification: “Whoever BELIEVES in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who BELIEVED in him were later to receive.” The key? It is the Spirit flowing from within us who produces the acceptable life. Our job? Stay out of His way, keep our sins confessed and cleansed, and renounce the activity and desires of the old nature. Then things will work the way they are supposed to work.