Exchanging your life!

The name of the ministry I work for (Exchanged Life Ministries or ELM) is a profound statement about how we live. For so many life is what you make of it, rather than life is a gift from God to be received not earned or achieved. The struggle is that I must be willing to exchange or sacrifice what I call life. Often we call life what God calls death. The man who is desperately trying to be the most successful in his field because he gets praise but is sacrificing his family on nights and weekends. When we come to the revelation that God has given us a new life "in Christ", it is rather offensive to every way we been living in contradiction to this new life. God does not just want to be an addition to my life, He has come to be my very life source. This means that God brings about a change in my identity, the way I see things, my relationships, and the way I function. This is not a minor course correction but the total transformation of life. It is mightily upsetting when you come to the place to realize you have been existing in a state of death but are being invited into life. This revelation hit me again as I realized that the way I have approached raising support and having provision for my family has had more death in that I want to admit. The problem with this kind of death is we are deceived to believe it is actually life, until the true fruit begins to reveal itself. Ways of thinking are not simply ideas but deeply embedded beliefs that guide our whole way of thinking. If these ways of thinking and viewing life are contrary to God's revealed Word, it is only a matter of time before the dead fruit reveals itself. None of us can boast, when we agree with Scripture that "we like sheep have all gone astray." As the arguments about Health Care Reform rage, the truth is no one but God is truly right. Everyone has their opinions but the Word is clear that "the wisdom of man is foolishness to God." We as the people of God don't have to wander and search all over the place to find life, the life of God has been given to us so we can turn to the Word to have revelation of how to live in this new life. I so thankful that I don't have to be tossed to and fro by all that is being said, lived, and touted in the world (and religious world). God's revealed truth is what will stand when everything else falls. Admitting we have been wrong in the way we see things is one thing, but to admit that we have been living out death and then receive His life is a whole new way. This is repentance, which is change of mind but not just a mental shift but a change to connect to a new power source with a new way of living. I find more and more that God's Word is not religion but a wholly different way of seeing the story of life that each one of us are involved in. Day by day I am amazed at how God is shifting the way I see myself, others, and all ways of living. I am amazed that God through His grace is not just offering life but resurrected/ascended life "in Christ". We don't need to understand this life to receive it but simply to say yes to the New Life, pressing in to see Him bring revelation. Revelation is not simply a different idea, it is the Spirit of God revealing who God is in us. I pray that day by day you will exchange your old life (mindset, way of looking at and living life) for Christ's new life.

In His Amazing Grace,
Bret