New Year's Message
Dear Ones,
Another year has passed and a new one is beginning! As we begin a new year I would like for us to once again rehearse the truth that is revealed to us in Jesus’ command to us in John 15. "Abide in me," followed by his promise, "and I will abide in you!” Yes, the very life of Jesus will abide in us and through us by the filling and indwelling of the Spirit if we will make Christ our heart’s home. Major Ian Thomas once said "Jesus came to give himself for us, so he might give himself to us, that he might live his life through us." We must remember that the only person who can live the christian life is Christ himself. It is only as we learn to die to our own resourcefulness and turn to Jesus in submission and dependency, that we begin to experience the very life of Christ filling us and manifesting itself through us.
Jesus prayed to his father in John 17, that we might experience the same oneness with him that he experienced with his father. "I dwelling in them, you Father, dwelling in me, that they may be made completely one with us!” Why did Jesus pray for this? So that the world may know that the Father had sent the Son and has loved us as He had loved Him. " YES! THAT THE WORLD MAY KNOW!” If the world is going to know Jesus it is going to know and experience him through you and me. As we abide in him and he abides in us, his love and joy, peace and patience, kindness and goodness, faithfulness and meekness, his self-control, his VERY LIFE will manifest itself through us in such a way that the world will see and know him as they observe him living his life through us.
There is much darkness in the world today and there is a great temptation for us to spend our life's energy in cursing that darkness. However, the greatest curse to darkness is light. All the darkness in the universe cannot extinguish the smallest ray of light. Jesus said to us, "You are the light of the world!" So as we enter 2018, let us pray for the grace to abide in Him without reservation, that He might live his life triumphantly through us without restriction!
May his richest blessings be with you and your household in this New Year!