Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Schaeffer: a moment by moment person to person relationship

If I refuse my place as creature before the Creator and do not commit myself to Him for His use, this is sin.  And anything else is also misery.  How can you enjoy God on any other level than what you are, and in this present situation? Anything else will bring misery, a torturing of the poor, divided personality we are since the Fall.  To live moment by moment through faith on the basis of the blood of Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit is the only really integrated way to live.  This is the only way to be at rest with myself, for only in this way am I not trying to carry what I cannot.  To do otherwise is to throw away my own place of rest, the substantial psychological advance I as a Christian can have in this present life.

But present communion with God requires bowing in both the intellect and the will.  Without bowing in the intellect, in thinking after God; without acting on the finished work of Christ in my present life; and without bowing in the will in practice, as the waves of the present life break over me, there is no sufficient communion with God.  Without these things I am not in my place as the creature in a fallen and abnormal world.  These three things are absolutely necessary if there is to be real and sufficient communion with God in the present life.  In the proportion that these things are so, then a person-to-person relationship to God is in place...

TS, pp.129&130

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