“When we talk about the ‘blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth
righteousness without works,’ we’re talking about the love, the joy, the peace,
the longsuffering,” says Jordan.
“Appropriating into your
experience is closed to all but the needy heart. It’s available only to those
who’ll say, ‘It’s not I but Christ.’
“When those two things—a conscious
awareness of faith-trust in who you are and then a realization of your absolute
need in every moment for it—then you need a lifetime of spiritual growth
because, friend, it takes time for the Holy Spirit to work that process into
the details of your life.
“That’s why Romans 7 is in Romans
7, not Romans 2 or 5. You’ve experienced this: You’re on the mountaintop and
you got the ‘Joy, Joy, Joy,’ and then a little while later, you’re down in the cloud-filled
doldrums, thinking, ‘I doubt I’ll ever see the mountaintop again.’
“And when you’re in those moments
of need, that’s the moment to say, ‘You know, here’s a IT'S NOT I experience! I’m
down here because I’ve been trusting ME.’
“Instead of defining your
situation by your problems, define them by who you are in Christ and look at
the situation you’ve gotten into as an opportunity to GROW because that’s
exactly what God’s grace is trying to get to.
*****
“I was at a Bible conference in
Tennessee where a woman driving to the event was in a bad car wreck. She was
injured quite severely and had a limb amputated and people asked, ‘Why?!’ But
there was something in this lady’s inner man that gave her joy in spite of it
all.
“You see, it’s ‘according to the
riches of His grace.’ (Eph. 1:7) You can feel forgiven even when the
circumstances don’t make out like you ought to. But you got to remember, no
Believer ever fell into maturity overnight. This is a lifelong process of
spiritual growth, of learning over and over, ‘It’s not I but Christ.’
“You take little baby steps at
first and then you become a person who can walk. But it’s always, ‘Not I but
Christ.’ It’s always seeing the riches that are mine in Him and becoming aware
of my need of that. Seeing and needing brings us from a child who’s always meandering
around to a responsible, specific, purposeful walk of faith. It’s called
maturity; it’s called being an adult.
*****
“Colossians 2:10 says, ‘And ye are
complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.’ But then look at chapter 4:12:
‘Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always
labouring fervently for you in prayers, that ye may stand perfect and complete
in all the will of God.’
“Wait a minute—I thought they were
complete?! Why is Epaphras praying and laboring that they would BE complete?
“Paul says in Ephesians 1, ‘You’re
accepted in the beloved.’ In II Corinthians 5:9, he says, ‘Wherefore we labour,
that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him.’
“You say, ‘Wait a minute—I thought
I was accepted!’ What Paul’s talking about is the difference between your
standing and your state; your position in Christ and your practice in time;
your identity in Him and then that identity living in your experience now.
*****
“If you’re complete in Him, there’s
nothing to make you MORE complete. All you need to do is appropriate the total
completeness already there and bring it into your experience and have the
practical, experiential possession of what already belongs to you.
“That is to experience the joy of,
‘I am forgiven.’ Whew, that’s a wonderful thing. Let that inform your mind so
that your emotions know how to relate to REALITY.
“Now, there’s two things you have
to have to appropriate anything. One, you got to know about it and you can
never know your identity if you don’t study the Bible rightly divided.
Dispensational Bible study is the most practical thing you’ll ever have in your
life because it gives you the ability to know who you really are.
“The other component is you not
only have to know it, you have to be aware of your need of it. That’s because
you’ll never reach out and appropriate into your experience something unless
you know that you really need it. That’s what was happening to Paul in Romans 7.
“He’ll say, ‘O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me
from the body of this death?’ and you say, ‘What?! How’d he get out of Romans 6
into that so fast?!’
“In Romans 7:14, Paul says, ‘For
we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin.’ You lying
rascal! You just told me that you’re complete in Christ, you’re dead with Him,
buried with Him, raised with Him! How’d you get out of chapter 6 so fast?!
“Paul, in Romans 7, is not
identifying himself as God does. He slipped back into identifying with how HE
identified himself. But then he says in one little phrase in Galatians 2:20:
‘It’s not I but Christ.’
“You got to have those ‘It’s not
I’ moments where you become aware of your utter bankruptcy so that the riches
of Christ become THE THING that’s the need of your heart.
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