Seeing who I really am I see HIM
Submitted by theshovelJim, what do you mean by this: “seeing who I really am I see HIM.” What do you do/see when “the flesh” acts up in you? Do you deny THAT as a “lie” too? You say it is a lie that we still need crucifixion, then what do you see when you see yourself getting impatient, weary, hungry or thirsty? What is that? Residual flesh? (I’ve heard that one as an explanation.) What is crucified? Why would it “act up” if it (the flesh) WAS crucified?
I’ve lived that past 2 years, believing this. I felt like I was in constant denial in my life and I was always thinking about my crucifixion. “I’m crucified, Christ lives”. The flesh finds a way to act up, even if it is very subtle-there it is….and yet, it is supposed to be crucified! So I’d find myself back in the cycle, saying that it is crucified. It doesn’t work to live in my mind that way. It seemed like a game I was playing with myself. What part of my mind would win this? Jesus is reality, He has to come over and over to save me, and as I experience this I am finding more and more peace and less and less games in my head about believing the right truth about it all. Like Ron said, the mind or flesh will always focus on ME. If it was really dead, I would have no thought of myself. “Jesus has to increase!” Anyway, just some thoughts I’ve been through this past months. :-) Without revelation we do only have words that sound hollow, with revelation, we have life together!
Hello my dear Joy! :)
Please know that you are precious to me, for I hold you as a dear sister. As when we were together in Canada, I would hope that you remember how my words to you were not hollow, for I came to you with no preparation other than Christ himself in me.
You wrote: Jim, what do you mean by this: “seeing who I really am I see HIM.”
I mean to say exactly what I said. However, I do understand your difficulty grasping what I wrote, for you now see my words only as some kind of mental exercises in the attempt to deny the reality I don’t want to face. And if that is what you have lived for the past 2 years, then you do not understand what I have written. For I do not speak of a formula to live by, nor of the proper words to quote to counteract my mental conflicts. Oh yes, I understand the game well enough to know that our mental gymnastics can make it infinitely adaptable. If he is in me and I in him, then that reality cannot help but to make itself known in innumerable ways. How could I ever be satisfied with just the words that describe the reality or of the ways in which it is revealed?
If you want to believe that all I “see” is a doctrinal reality of which I can only struggle to talk myself into, then that is what all you will hear in my words. However, if I am SEEING (present tense … ongoing) who I really am and have come to recognize that I see HIM in who I am seeing, my words might describe something other than you assume. What if I mean exactly what the words imply? I cannot run on the energy of yesterday’s insights merely by quoting its words or teachings; however, I know full well that a true, present seeing may be freshly expressed using words from any number of yesterdays.
You wrote: What do you do/see when “the flesh” acts up in you? Do you deny THAT as a “lie” too? You say it is a lie that we still need crucifixion, then what do you see when you see yourself getting impatient, weary, hungry or thirsty? What is that? Residual flesh? (I’ve heard that one as an explanation.) What is crucified? Why would it “act up” if it (the flesh) WAS crucified?
Joy, do you really understand what you are asking of me? Would you really have me recognize, that is, judge myself according to the flesh because it better fits your current viewpoint? Do you imagine that truly knowing who I really am somehow makes me unaware of the insanity that might take place within my body? Would you chalk it up to a mental game for me to tell you that I recognize that the insanity is not me? What kind of mental game do you think Paul described when he wrote:
So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. Romans 7:17
How else could he go on to conclude that there is NOW no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus? He came out of that abyss through the experiential, first-hand knowing that the thing he always imagined himself to be - especially the insanity he might witness in himself - was no longer his reality. Somehow in the midst of rampant condemnation, he realized that “no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me”. This was a revelation that stuck with him, one that he did not have to go back and readdress over and over again in order to keep it real, for it was real to him every day. It was real for the simple reason that the Spirit of Christ in him made it real. His words were not written to be a formula, but a testimony of the very real life he knew to be true in Christ.
But to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you, or by any human court; in fact, I do not even examine myself. For I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted; but the one who examines me is the Lord. 1 Corinthians 4:3-4
As we have quoted numerous verses from the Corinthian letters in the past few weeks, it may do well to consider them in view of the above. Do you really think there was anything Paul said that would have contradicted his own lack of personal examination? Do you think he was trying to say that he was not conscious of things against himself, except for that which the Spirit made him aware of on a daily basis? How do you think he would have answered your questions about the acting up of his flesh?
I wrote: The bogus battle waged in the mind of the flesh is the only thing that would cause me to fear myself, for in seeing who I really am I see HIM.
Yes, the battle that wages war in the mind of the flesh takes on many forms, and we would do well to recognize that any war fought there is already a loss. When I was a young man in Bible College, I came up with a few pictorial representations of the doctrines I was learning. I sketched two stick figure boxers by some of the passages taught as describing the supposed battle between the 2 natures, Romans 7 being the first and foremost. Somewhere along the way, the diagram of those two boxing men began mocking me, for I slowly began to realize the inevitability that there was no victory for the “new nature” described in the passage.
Was this a doctrinal understanding? Actually, it was more of a depressing recognition that came to me as a result of my own real failure to gain the upper hand through the care and feeding of the new nature. I had been taught that whichever one I fed would be the stronger, but somehow, that did not work out as hoped. It was only then that I saw the 100% chance of defeat described in the passage (at least, according to the view I had adopted). The battle as viewed according to appearances is bogus. I came to recognize that Paul had not recorded the process by which I was to overcome sin in my life, but that he had recorded how reality broke through in the midst of the mind of insanity that has been stimulated by law. Oh yes, the struggle seems real, for it would demand to be the only true way of viewing reality. And it indeed causes untold havoc in the process. However, in the midst of the bogus struggle, the life of God in the inner man shows himself for who he is. It is here where I have looked, only to see who I am no longer. It is a shocking revelation, for it took everything I had assumed about myself and revealed it to not be me. Instead, I discovered that I was the one who loved the goodness, holiness, and righteousness of God.
We speak a lot about revelation, and though the word itself conveys a mysterious insight into the mind of God, I have to wonder about that which is called revelation that would have me constantly looking for hints of self, the revelation that would make me conscious of something against myself. Joy, I am not referring to everything you say (for I think I know the life in you, and you have written many encouraging words), but too often the revelation you speak of sounds more like a resurrection of an ongoing system by which you might examine yourself according to the flesh. Of that revelation, I want none. No, I will LIVE in revelation, the revelation that came yesterday, and that which comes today, and will not fail tomorrow. Christ himself is the revelation of God.
My dear lady, do you really understand what you are asking of yourself in the questions you posed to me?
Please accept this response as my deepest love to you.
Jim
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