Is This All There Is?

Have you ever asked yourself this question? If you have, you're on the right track because the answer is yes or no. It is not yes and no. It is yes or no. And the choice is yours.

All of us have figured out how to fill our lives with enough activities to keep this question at bay. But ocassionally it sneaks out of the closet just long enough for us to push it back in. Don't do it.

Christmas is, perhaps, the hardest time to ask this question with the crush of activities forced upon us. Ever wonder why this pressure in December? I think sometimes the world is trying desperately to forget that this holiday is a celebration of joy to welcome the birth of Jesus our Redeemer.

But the angels rejoiced. The shepherds rejoiced. Zacharias described it best in his prophetic prayer (Luke 1:78); "the sunrise from on high shall visit us, to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death".

So, back to the crucial question. Is this all there is?

To answer the question, we must start at death. An odd place for a father who buried a beloved daughter this year. But to death we must go because that is where God Most High takes us.

A note of acknowledgment. These biblical truths were eloquently laid down by Miles J. Stanford in his published works "The Green Letters". I highly recommend them to you.

Romans 6:5-6 speaks of a life lived here on Earth by you after you have you have died. Not a ghost. Not the future when God's people come back to live here. But today. As you live and breath and read these words.

This fundamental truth is; all resurrection life springs out of death or it is not resurrection life. The answer to the question, is this all there is?, no. There's more.

Resurrection life, the life God always intended for Adam and for us, lies just a heartbeat beyond the normal physical life of every soul.

When Val died on that dark night in April, it was, in a very real sense, her 2nd death. Her first occurred at some point in her life when she died to herself and began to live a resurrection life that brought her to the place God always intended her to be. And we had the great privilege and great pain of going with her on her last great battle.

What I am talking about is not a personal committment that causes us to busily rush around trying to grow up in the christian faith. The tragedy of this sort of thing is that our old self, like some walking deadman, is still at home and thrives, hoping that we don't ever figure it out. He knows that if we do, all is lost for him.

At a conference many years ago, Doctor Charles Schofield said it best, "Of all the needy classes of people on Earth, the neediest are not those who are having a heartbreaking, agonizing struggle for victory but those who are having no struggle at all, and no victory, and who do not know it, and are satisfied to jog along through life in a pitiable absence of all the possessions that belong to them in Christ".

God works by paradox. Success comes through failure; life springs out of death. Take a moment and go to this U-Tube link to see how this truth will forever prevail.

Click here for link

Our old self, our flesh, is infinitely pre-occupied with itself. We are good. We are excellent. We are bad. We are imperfect. We must struggle to improve. In fact, according to God, our flesh is so utterly bad, that it is beyond all recovery.

Romans 6:11 does not say reckon yourself weak unto sin. It does not say reckon yourself dying unto sin. It says reckon yourself dead. The dead do not sin. But that is impossible for us. We love our sins so much. Where can we go to find the power to do the impossible? We must go to the Cross of Calvary. Only there resides the power to deny ourself. Only there can we find our life on the resurrection side of the cross and leave behind the old self-life for the new Christ Life. The blood of Jesus Christ has procured our pardon. The cross procures our deliverance from what we are.

In Galatians 2:20, The Apostle Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ and no longer live, but the life I now live I live by faith...". Paul lived two lives while he walked this Earth. Who he was, and who you were, was nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ. And died there. Let the dead stay forever dead.

Is this all there is? The answer is yes or no. The choice is yours

Merry Christmas Beloved