The Starting Point

“We also rejoice and exulting glory in God in his love and perfection through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received and enjoy our reconciliation” – Romans 5:11

I am constantly perplexed by how hard it is for my heart to embrace what my mind affirms. The more I read, the more I listen, the more I see , everything that filters into my head, I find it easier to acknowledge and agree with ideas and thoughts but most of this usually is fodder for my mind.

The essence of who God is, if you like his glory and nature and all he has brought me into by his grace, has been birthed deep inside my innermost being. My heart is a garden of new creation soil, where the seed of Jesus Christ has been planted and watered by the Holy Spirit. Through his glory and goodness he has given me all his precious and great promises. His words to me are a treasure map that contains his plans and dreams for my life, and I know that every word he has provided he will always be faithful to, it is always true and that he is committed to it.

For it is one thing to agree with the finished work of Christ but it is something altogether different to experience its power and reality in the everyday crisis of life.

So how does this finished work of Christ become reality in my life?

The starting point for me was the realisation that I have become a partaker of the divine nature. That all my sins, past, present and future sins were forgiven at the cross, before I was born.  That every promise of God had its fulfilment in Christ. That the ground of my heart was the fulfilled sacrifice of Christ and that everything pertaining to Christ had been planted into me.  The Holy Spirit alive in me had cultivated a Garden of Delight within my heart and he was quietly, actively, effortlessly bringing my heart into blossom and ripening his fruit.

I now have a divine nature, and I no longer had a sinful nature. I had been made righteous and good, I have God’s desires inside me, I experience God’s delight within me, I have a fountain of life bubbling up through me.  I had been set free from the slavery of the world, I had been delivered form the corruption, decay and death that I inherited through my natural birth and I was eternal clean, holy and blessed through my spiritual birth.

I have been brought into the fullness of Christ and his abundant grace has set me free to live in intimate communion with the lover of my heart.