That awareness of Christ’s indwelling generated an inexhaustible energy within me to share Him with others also. I began sharing Christ with whomever and whatever stood still long enough to hear me. Naturally my classmates at school were the first to hear and see. From there it grew to neighbours and strangers. The witness I bore then and bear now is without any religious obligation; it is the fellowship that I enjoy with the Father that compels me to communicate. 1 John 1:3. I had absolutely no desire to simply change people’s opinions to agree with me, neither did I have any motivation to have them join my religious organization. NO! It was the reality of Christ in me that drove me to make others aware of the wealth that was within their reach also.

Many experiences can lose their thrill after a while, but the awareness of God’s indwelling only grows in its appeal and intensity.

What qualifies you to share Christ?
Speaking from the reality of an awareness of your union with Christ; the reality of a living relationship with Him, is irresistible and it is all the qualification you will ever need. Many of the disciples Jesus chose were illiterate! And the few who learned to write, did not bother putting anything on record until decades after His death and resurrection. The simple reason for this is that Christ in them was a reality of much greater importance to them than systematic theology.

Act 4:13 Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and found out that they were uneducated and ordinary men, they were amazed and realized that they had been with Jesus.

Your qualification to share Christ has nothing to do with your education or social status – it has everything to do with your contact with Jesus.

Paul, the one apostle that could boast of his education and human qualifications had this to say about it:

Phi 3:7 The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash–along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ.
Phi 3:8 Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant–dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ

I can’t really improve on that – read it again. If you have studied much and know the scriptures better than most you should maybe read it one more time.

Our confident appeal.
You see, if our appeal was to the intellect of man, then by all means get as much education and degrees as possible. And don’t stop with theology – psychology, sociology and philosophy could be very handy as well.

Or maybe our appeal should be to man’s natural desires. Then by all means you should make your Sunday services as entertaining as possible; make your message as un-offensive as possible and hope that your good looks and professional appearance draw some people into attending another meeting.

But if we desire to communicate the gospel of Christ, our communication needs to extend far beyond these superficial, shallow levels and stir up the spirit of man.

2Co 3:5 not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God;
2Co 3:6 who also has made us able ministers of the new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit makes alive.

Our aim is the spirit, not the head. The only person able to teach us this skill of hitting the target of the heart is God Himself.

2Co 4:2 but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by the manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.

Nothing has greater authority and ability to awaken the conscience of man, than another man walking in the truth; enjoying the reality of fellowship with God. No institution can teach you that. No one else can be intimate with God on your behalf – there is only one person capable of bringing you into the awareness of your union with Christ … and that’s you, simply yielding to Christ in you and believing what He says concerning you and Him.

2Co 4:6 Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
2Co 4:7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves;

If we look to any of our own characteristics as a basis for our qualification to share Christ, we miss the point. It is not the clay pot that makes the treasure inside valuable; it is the treasure inside that makes the clay pot valuable. This message carries within itself an authority that is undeniable. It’s when our appreciation of the treasure becomes dim that we try to decorate the pot. It’s when we take our focus off the message of ‘Christ in you’, that we become concerned with presenting the ‘pot’ – the container -  in a slick, appealing way. What a joy to discover that our confidence is not based on our own ability to communicate, but on God’s ability to reveal himself – it is the content of this gospel that carries the faith of God and sets the tone for the faith response of those who hear.

2 Pet1:5 (Mirror Translation) Now that the stage is set to display life’s excellence, imagine the extreme devotion and focus of a conductor of music; (epichoregeo, epi, preposition, + chorus, chorus or choir or orchestra, + ago, to lead as a shepherd leads his sheep) how he would diligently acquaint himself with every individual voice in the choir, as well as the contribution of every specific instrument, to follow the precise music represented in every note in order to give maximum credit to the original composition; this is exactly what it means to exhibit the divine character. Before a performance the first violinist will give the exact note for every instrument to be finely tuned to that note, in the same way the faith of God gives that exact pitch. You are the choir conductor of your own life; study the full content of faith; you will find virtue there, and within virtue faith-inspired knowledge will voice its contribution. (There is a level of understanding that can only be accessed by faith. Heb.11:3, “by faith we understand that the ages were framed by the Word of God…)

This mystery has been kept in the dark for a long time, but now it’s out in the open. God wanted everyone, not just Jews, to know this rich and glorious secret inside and out, regardless of their background, regardless of their religious standing. The mystery in a nutshell is just this: Christ is in you, so therefore you can look forward to sharing in God’s glory. It’s that simple. That is the substance of our Message. We preach Christ, warning people not to add to the Message. We teach in a spirit of profound common sense so that we can bring each person to maturity. To be mature is to be basic. Christ! No more, no less. (Col 1:26-29 MSG)

Christ is in you! What more do you need? There is nothing more! All that can be done is to appreciate more, the reality of Christ in you!

Often people speak about ‘children of the Devil’ and ‘children of God’ as if God and the Devil are on the same level as creators. Ridiculous! There is only one Creator, one God and one Father of us all (Eph 4:6). And in the previous chapter Paul writes: “I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.” The only thing Satan ever gave birth to is lies. Throughout the centuries man has adopted this foreign ‘father’ by submitting to his way of thinking, thereby adopting a foreign identity. Yet submitting to this lie did not change the truth of mankind’s origin, nor did it make the Devil an actual creator or father. It is in this context that Jesus said: ‘You are of your father the Devil’ referring to their actions and their way of thinking, immediately qualifying it in the next sentence by saying: ‘he is the father of lies’. I love the way in which the Message translates John 1:12:
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves.

Jesus, seeing the emptiness of religious festivals and rituals offered a much better alternative. “On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, he should come to Me and drink! The one who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, will have streams of living water flow from deep within him.” (John 7:37-38). Jesus has more to offer than religious festivals and rituals; more than external sources of religious experiences. Once you partake of what He has to offer it becomes a source of overflowing life within you.

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In my early childhood – I was about five years old – we moved into a new house. Most of these houses in South Africa had big back yards and these made ideal playgrounds for small boys. We called it a ‘yard’ instead of a garden because it wasn’t really a neatly kept garden – it was more like a large enclosure. On the day we moved in I noticed something very tempting: the neighbour had a small orchard of mango trees in his back yard … and I loved mangoes. My dad must have read my thoughts because at the moment I noticed these trees, he said to me: “Don’t even think of going into the neighbour’s yard – there is a vicious dog guarding the trees”. That was a very disappointing piece of information as through the days and weeks that followed I witnessed the mango fruit ripening.

I often played in the back yard in the afternoons and felt terribly tempted by the ripe mangoes over the fence, however my fear of the vicious dog prevented me from even attempting to pick a mango. One afternoon, while playing, I became desperately ‘hungry’ and the fruit seemed particularly inviting. I nervously sneaked onto the fence at the far end of the yard to have a better look at the dog, but I couldn’t see the dog anywhere. I took my chance and jumped over the fence, grabbed a couple of mangoes and jumped back into my own yard. They were delicious!

It did not take me long to realise that there was no dog! The moral of the story is not about temptation or repentance or anything deeply spiritual like that. The point is simply that my experience of hunger was real, my experience of fear was real, but these real experiences were based on the lie that I believed regarding a vicious dog. The moment I realised that there was no dog the fear disappeared … and as a consequence so did the hunger. How many of our real experiences are based on lies? How different would our experiences be, if we believed differently?

The truth that Jesus introduces us to is of a much higher authority than our experience – it is a truth that is able to transform our experience. He wants to introduce us to a truth much broader than our narrow experiences.

“… my judgement would be true because I wouldn’t make it out of the narrowness of my experience but in the largeness of the One who sent me, the Father.”(John 8:16 MSG). If Jesus considered his own experience as narrow compared to a much greater reality, then we too might have to re-evaluate the importance we attach to personal experience.

In the same way as our personal experiences are to narrow to reveal our true identity, so too is our culture too narrow; our language too narrow; our society too narrow; our race too narrow; even our relationships, no matter how precious, are too narrow. He reveals that all the measures we’ve used to measure ourselves with are completely inadequate. “but when they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are without understanding” He shatters our illusions, but at that very moment He also brings to light the truth of our design. We are eternal beings, which means that anything temporal will not do justice to God’s estimation of our worth and He invites us to see ourselves from His point of view.

Testimonies are great as a means of pointing towards the substance. However, the substance of our message is more than our personal journeys in life and more than God’s personal dealings with us. Ultimately, the substance of our message is an introduction to the person of Christ or our message has no substance at all. This gospel is more than the story of God’s involvement in my life so far, or your life so far. God wants to overwhelm us with the reality of His presence to such an extent that the past becomes irrelevant! Even the good memories, the testimonies of God’s goodness can become stale if our awareness of His very present reflection within us, is somehow lost.

There is a place of awareness – Paul called it the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord – that makes every other type of knowledge, discussion or perceived wisdom, irrelevant. Yesterday, today and tomorrow do not add or subtract from who He is. God is, long before time as we know it began. We may use the temporal and stories from our lives to point towards Christ, but he will always be greater and better than what the temporal can contain. He is Himself the content of the gospel and as such the gospel is more than stories about Him, it is the power of God unto salvation.

When Jesus prayed one of the last recorded prayers before His certain death, His words were not nostalgic regarding the past nor were they simply focused on the future, but the power of His testimony was found in its relevance to this moment. Hear what He said and notice the immediacy of His thought.

I have given them the glory You have given Me.

May they be one as We are one.

I am in them and You are in Me.

May they be made completely one,

so the world may know You have sent Me

and have loved them as You have loved Me.

Father, I desire those You have given Me

to be with Me where I am.

Then they will see My glory,

which You have given Me

because You loved Me before the world’s foundation. John 17:22-24

All the prophets bore witness and pointed towards an event; a person, in which the mystery – the fullness of God’s purpose – would be made known. It was not because of a lack of diligence that they only saw and spoke in fragments and glimpses, but because of the enormity of this revelation. There was only One who was worthy to open the seals; only One who would have the strength and wisdom to accurately reflect God’s original idea; only One who witnessed and was part of God’s original motivation to create. The prophets saw glimpses of the mind of God, but Jesus is the mind of God.

In no way does this belittle the prophets, but rather it emphasises the significance of Christ. The messages that came through the prophets had such rich variety, they were relevant in so many different generations and were communicated in such a diversity of ways, but they were all moving towards a climax – the crescendo of God’s conversation with man. The prophets spoke, wrote and sometimes used dramatic action to communicate their message – Jesus is the message. The prophets often spoke a word that was relevant for their generation, their time and situation – Jesus is the complete and eternal Word, always relevant, always fresh. The prophets bore witness to the reality and truth they saw – Jesus is that reality, is that truth. He is the very brilliance and light of God’s character and His aim is not simply to reveal truth to us, but to make us true. As we behold Him we are transformed into that same image!

The One who began it all, the Author of the ages, has not forsaken what He made. He is as surely the Lord of ‘destiny’ as He is the Lord of creation. The Creator is also the Redeemer. He has not retreated into being a distant observer, a purely transcendent God, but continues to be intimately involved, sustaining all existence, upholding the universe.

When John speaks about the Word that became flesh, He is saying that the very mind of God, the reason and very life of God was made visible, so that we no longer have to grope in the darkness, but know His thoughts towards us. He is the true or real light – the essence and reality of everything. If you want to know what God is like, look at what Jesus is like. Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”. In this one statement He identifies Himself as the ultimate reality, the mind of God revealed.

God’s Word is Jesus Christ. There is only one Word and only one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus. All He has to say to us, He said in Christ. All He has to give to us, He gave in Jesus Christ, for in Christ, He gave Himself in all His fullness. Not only did He become man, but in His free gift of grace, He makes us like Himself. Our entire relation with God, happens within this Word. This is the Word that planned our existence, this is the Word through whom we were created, this is the Word that is our mediation, this is the Word that reveals the secret of our identity and the purpose of our existence, and this Word is our only hope and destiny.
The Word Eternal

Long before the first line of scripture
was penned on papyrus scroll,
the Word, unwritten,
existed as the mind of God.

Before the books were gathered
collated as sacred text,
the Word, intangible; invisible,
was planning, was ordering
the ages that were to come.
This Word predates the Bible,
this Word predates creation,
this Word is alive and active
and speaking still today.

“Heaven is my throne room;
I rest my feet on earth.
So what kind of house
will you build me?” says God.

What kind of doctrine could enfold Him,
What kind of information could define Him,
What kind of book could contain Him?

Yet, despite His boundless nature,
within His infinite wisdom,
He devised a crafty plan, by which
His thoughts, His intents
would fit themselves into
the form of a humble seed:
The DNA of His own life,
encrypted within the written Word.

And so began the writing
of that which we now call:
the Bible – the Scriptures.
Within the limitations; imperfections
of human words and human authors
God placed His eternal perfect seed.

A seed is not a tree;
the Scriptures are not our God,
Yet a seed is the beginning, the start -
provided with fruitful soil,
encouraged by water and light,
a seed gives birth to a being
much greater than itself.

His plan foresaw the day
in which this seed would blossom
no longer encrypted; no longer disguised
but fully expressed in the person
of Jesus – the Christ – the Son
The One who was in the beginning
revealed within our midst
Immanuel – God with us -
the Word became flesh.

His desire is still the same:
for His Word to break free of the boundaries
of letters and text and theories
and yet again, became flesh,
and yet again find expression in a person:
you – the chosen – the offspring of God.

So as we approach the Scriptures,
do more than read what is written -
listen to what is spoken.
So once again we can encounter
the mind, the voice, the person
who spoke long before
pen or paper were born.
(by Andre Rabe)
This Great Salvation
Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that would come to you searched and carefully investigated. They inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when He testified in advance to the messianic sufferings and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you concerning things that have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven. 1 Pet 1:10-12

When they inquired about the time to which all their writings pointed, the event that would be the fulfillment of God’s purpose and the release of His glory on earth, the Spirit of God within them pointed towards the sufferings of Christ. They realised that we ( those who came after the suffering of Christ ) would be the beneficiaries of this event. How many continue to search the scriptures, trying to find another prophesy that points to another time or event, and in the process neglect the greatest event – this great salvation.

The Jews divided time into two parts, namely: the present age, and the age to come. The ‘present age’ was subject to evil and the ‘age to come’ would be the perfect age in which God rules. In between these two ages they saw the ‘Day of the Lord’ which was, as it were the birth pangs of the new age. The writer of Hebrews is saying that the age of glimpses, fragments is gone and the age of completeness has come. The time of shadows and grasping in the dark has gone, the time of reality and truth has come. In Jesus “… the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining” and  “you will do well to heed this word as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” (1John2:8, 2 Pet 1:19). Jesus is not just another messenger of ‘the present age’, but He is the Day of the Lord, giving birth to a whole new dispensation.

God anticipated a time and a person in which He would reveal Himself in such clarity and completeness, that for all eternity it would be known as the crescendo, the sum total of His conversation with man. Just as He spoke creation into existence, this declaration would once again be a word of such magnitude that it would give birth to a whole new creation. Just as He originally said: “let light shine out of darkness”, He would once again speak a word that would shine with the knowledge of the favour of God; a message that would radiate the character of God with such accuracy that it would dispel all darkness, destroy all ignorance of His love and leave man without excuse to remain distant. This event would mark the end of the old Adamic race, a race defined by the fall of man, and be the birth of a new humanity, a humanity which God reconciled to Himself, not holding their trespassed against them, a humanity defined by Christ – His final Word regarding man.

Identity revealed
In the face of Christ Jesus the eternal purpose of God, His original intent and thoughts towards man were made plain. This revelation destroys every false identity and unlocks the truth about us. The light that confronted Saul on the way to Damascus was both a destructive force and a life-giving encounter. The flaming fire of the presence of God eternally destroyed Saul, and simultaneously brought forth Paul – the true person that God had in mind since the beginning. As Paul continued to look into this light, he saw the face of Christ shining with the knowledge of the glory of God. As he looked deeply, he became aware of the real significance of Christ, a significance far beyond the miracles He performed, a significance far beyond the few years He spent on earth. He began to recognise, in the face of Christ, the true identity of mankind.

It is this insight into Christ which takes us beyond a mere historic appreciation of Him, into a present awareness of the One who lives; the One who represents my innocence at the right hand of God.

Jesus once asked: “Who do men say that I am?”. After His disciples gave Him all the current opinions and hearsay stories, He asked: “And you, who do you say that I am?”. There is an appointed time for you to move beyond popular opinion and come to your own conclusion. Can you hear Him asking you that question today: “Who do you say that I am?” Seeing Him for who He truly is, is not an intellectual exercise; it’s not simply reading about what He did or said. Even His disciples who were with Him did not come to an accurate conclusion about Him from observing Him in the natural. It was only when the Father revealed His own point of view to Peter, that Peter started to appreciate the real Christ. Jesus then immediately started speaking to Peter about his true identity – that He was a piece of a rock carved and originating in another rock. Reminds us of Is 51: “You who seek the LORD: Look to the rock from which you were hewn” In realising His true identity, you discover your own. “The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.” (Rom 12:3 MSG).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. (2 Cor 3:18 NAS). Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is the reflection of God’s original thought about us, the means by which we were created, the mediator through whom we are justified and made blameless, the mirror in whom we see the truth that we were indeed created in His image and likeness.

Christ is the revelation of your true identity. “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.” (Col 3:4 NAS) The word ‘when’ in the Greek is in the present continuous tense. In other words ‘whenever’ is probably a better translation. The Mirror translation says it this way: “Every time Christ is revealed as our life, we are being co-revealed in the same glory (likeness and image of God) being united together with Him.”

More details of the book here: Secret of Contentment