In Christ

A few years back I got a call from a friend, my ex-pastor in Texas. Since I live in New York we keep in touch sometimes monthly to check on each other. On this day all he said was, “Eddy, I want you to go and buy a book titled “Who I Am in Christ” by Neil T. Anderson. That was the end of our conversation. It was quick and to the point. Well, I did just as my friend asked and what a blessing it was. As I read the book it was like a missing link in my walk with Christ.

As I read today’s devotional by A. B. Simpson he talks about this, “being in Christ”. My friends I lost “one’s self” as he puts it, back in 1997. I am totally free. As you read this devotional ask yourself, “Do I want this freedom?” I pray you will answer truthfully, “yes!” This world we live in is encased with trouble and burdens. Some it seems experience more than others. What I have found in Christ my self-consciousness is now dropped and I am focused on others. When a burden comes into my life, I look up and Jesus says to me, “I got it Ed, keep doing my will and care for those that don’t know or understand!”

[A devotional by A. B. Simpson]

"I know a man in Christ" (II. Corinthians. xii. 2).

[It is a great deliverance to lose one's self. There is no heavier millstone that one can be compelled to carry than self-consciousness. It is so easy to get introverted and coiled round one's self in our spiritual consciousness. There is nothing that is so easy to fasten on as our misery; there is nothing that is more apt to produce self-consciousness than suffering, until it becomes almost a settled habit to hold on to our burden, and pray it unceasingly into the very face of God, until our very prayer saturates us with our own misery, instead of asking for power to drop ourselves altogether, and leave ourselves in His loving hands and know that we are free, and then rise into the blessed liberty of His higher thoughts and will, and His love and care for others.

The very act of letting go of ourselves really lifts us into a higher plane, and relieves us from the thing that is hurting. This habit of prayer for others, and especially for the world, brings its own recompense, and leaves upon our hearts a blessing like the fertility which the Nile deposits upon the soil of Egypt, as it flows through to its distant goal.]

New Through Christ

Ever since the day I was born
my life was not my own.
It had a purpose to fulfill
until He calls me home.

But what is always most troubling
as each day I strive to live,
is understanding it is not about me
but to all the others that I must give.

It is not about my accomplishments,
but instead what Christ has done for me.
I am no longer of myself,
because Jesus set me free.

He freed me from this worldly sin,
which is upon us day and night.
As His sinless body hung nailed to the Cross,
that made me special in the Father’s sight.

My days are all for Him now,
my burdens are oh so few.
I am this righteous child of God
through Christ I am brand new.

E. P. Shagott
1/23/10

From God’s heart, to mine, to yours,
Ed Shagott