A friend and I started a conversation concerning uninterrupted fellowship last week. which I know will be an encouragement to others. Here are some of the thoughts:
I’m so aware that all my efforts to please God, has always lead to disappointment and frustration. This morning again, on my way to work, I was confronted with thoughts that could have left me with a sense of …. not fullness, not satisfaction. I was reminded again that there is a secret to satisfaction – a key to contentment no matter what circumstances you are in. I remembered Col 2:11 – Entering into this fullness is not something you figure out or achieve. ….and then Gal 3:^19-21What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Paul found a motivation greater than being driven to impress God! That motivation is the realisation that God is already impressed with you!
I am convinced that our experience of His fullness, our grasp on the love that surpasses knowledge has everything to do with simply being aware of what He achieved on our behalf. Fruit is not an effort for a fruit tree – it is the natural and spontaneous product when the life within the tree is too abundant for simple survival – it overflows in fruit. Draw upon the reality of His indwelling – there is more in you than what you know.

There is a ‘place’ where we experience the peace, the fountain of life. The question is how do we ‘abide’ in this place, rather than visit it from time to time.
I read Rom 6:6-11 again – so encouraging:
We know that our old self was nailed to the cross with Him in order that [our] body [which is the instrument] of sin might be made ineffective and inactive for evil, that we might no longer be the slaves of sin.
For when a man dies, he is freed (loosed, delivered) from [the power of] sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, because we know that Christ (the Anointed One), being once raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has power over Him.
For by the death He died, He died to sin [ending His relation to it] once for all; and the life that He lives, He is living to God [in unbroken fellowship with Him].Even so consider yourselves also dead to sin and your relation to it broken, but alive to God [living in unbroken fellowship with Him] in Christ Jesus.

I’m exited about that phrase: living in unbroken fellowship with Him. So much of the religious teachings I heard were about ‘dying to sin/old self’ … whatever they called it, it came down to some sort of effort from my side to achieve or reach this place of fellowship. What struck me in these verses is that the death we die to sin is a singular event – ‘once and for all’! It is not supposed to be a continual struggle. And the way I finally put to death the old man is by ‘consider / calculate / come to this conclusion: I died with Him! …. I was also raised with Him to a new life. My life is now consumed by new realities. I no longer live to attain anything, but because of what He attained on my behalf.

I am convinced that the ‘old man’ – the flesh – thrives of whatever attention we give it. It shrivels to its appointed place of insignificance when we place all our attention on Christ – who He is and who we are because of who He is.

Ps 17:15 As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, in thy likeness.
To ‘wake up’ requires no conscious effort – it is simply the point at which my mind’s attention shifts from unreal imaginations to seeing reality.