A Personal Testimony of Romans 7, Romans 8: 1,2

Last week, I began looking at the Scripture in Romans 8:1, 2.  Today is not a devotion per se, but a testimony. 

There are a few ways one can expound on the Scriptures as you know:  apologetics, hermeneutics, exegesis, etc.  Yet in all of this, there is one thing for sure, that as we take in the Word of God, His goal is for His Words to become life within our hearts and effective.  We are growing in grace (in the knowledge of Him) and in spirit.

It goes back to the airplane/jet.  When the Wright brothers were inventing/constructing it, it would have been quite odd if they never got in it. We'd call this experience.  What a wonder that God's Word is indeed so personal, available, and can be known to any heart by the power of the Holy Spirit.  By His Words being made known to us in a deep, personal way, we will have TRUE experience.

When I was growing up, my Dad had some struggles. To share this is NO indictment on him - for I loved my Dad.  But I can't tell you how much God used his struggles to get me personally seeking TRUTH in my own heart.  My Dad was not in error -  he really believed, with all his heart, in the Son of God - the Living Christ and that through Him and Him alone we receive eternal Life.  Also, that through Him and Him alone we receive HIS righteousness.  This is justification.

After all these years though, I really understand more deeply, my Dad's struggles and my own!  He honestly had a great handle on being justified by and through faith in Christ Jesus His Lord.  I would hear him say how inside his heart he carried on a rich fellowship with Jesus - that he'd wake up in the middle of the night doing this.

Yet then I'd see him slip in those struggles of the flesh - back and forth.  And he'd sincerely, I mean sincerely be determined he was not going to do it anymore and within a few weeks, back down he'd go.  Sometimes I felt him knelt down by my bed, with his head buried to my side, weeping asking me to forgive him.  In my heart I could only feel mercy, even though I did not understand.  Oh, but  God - God understood - God knew!

Now as a young person, again I did not understand it at all.  Yet like Mary, I'd ponder these things in my heart.  By the time I was an older youth though, I had my OWN struggles - emotionally, spiritually, etc.  And I did the same thing that many do - "TRY" to be a good Christian, "TRY" to get on with some good performance.  And even though I was not doing things that would deserve prison, etc. - I was struggling with MY OWN flesh and trying to "ACHIEVE" being near to God.  Just going to church, sitting in Sunday School, did not satisfy my heart.  It's true.  What was the problem?

I truly believe I was born-again but I just didn't get it.  I can remember trying to achieve being the fastest one in a Bible drill to find a Scripture.  They'd call out the Scripture, then you had to find it real quick.  But how in God's name could this performance set me free from the law of sin and death?   How could hearing sermons of how we needed to perform better, come to the altar, repent, and go out and try again do the same and even more, be joyful? 

And for me, by the time I was twenty years old, I figure if I surrendered to Christian service, maybe that would do it.  I sold my car, packed up my belongings and traveled a 1,000 miles to go to Bible School. (for the first time).  And in one semester I discovered something real powerful.  That my flesh was not able in and of itself to be of service to others or even to myself unless I could discover something else - and it was really SOMEONE ELSE.   A story about Hudson Taylor, reading it upon my bed at school, truly wet my appetite.

We all live and walk in so far as we know.  This was my dilemma.  I was only walking as a Christian in what I knew and understood.   I wanted to find out why my Dad and I struggled so.  We believed we were failures in walking out this Christian life.  My search truly was just as much for my Dad as it was for myself.  And part of the problem truly is, if it's not preached in our assemblies, how can we know?

So after all these years, I am just rejoicing in the TRUTH that it is indeed Christ in us that is our HOPE of GLORY.  Not a hope of glory, but the hope of glory.  This is the other part of the Gospel.  Flesh and blood cannot do it, but His LIFE within us CAN!  Jesus Christ is the LIFE.  This is why Paul so thoroughly presented the problem in Romans 7 -   We are not living and walking by performance to the LAW - we are LIVING and WALKING unto JESUS CHRIST - the Spirit of LIFE and LIBERTY.  Romans 8: 1,2

To walk by flesh and blood effort through the Law is unbelief, not faith.  To walk by the Spirit of the Living Christ within, is Faith.  One brings condemnation, the other brings life and glory.

What makes this SO exciting to my heart is that He is doing the work within us - in our minds, in our hearts - to first understand, then to learn HOW we walk in faith daily.  This alone brings great intimacy and fellowship with Him.  We start to really KNOW there is NO condemnation to us.  Why?  Because we are not "trying" to achieve holiness through the flesh.  Instead we are LOOKING to JESUS WHO is holiness and righteousness.  We are growing in HIS life in our spirit.  Philippians 1:6.

Through His way, we start to "see" greater fruit in our lives.  In the meantime, we really ARE justified by grace through faith because of Jesus Christ.  We realize too, when He said He will NEVER leave or forsake us - He really means it.  Our Lord is committed to His work in us.  He is committed to us as His Bride, His love, His people, His children, His making known to our hearts His great salvation.

I will close with these Scriptures that are so worth pondering.  May these words bless us more richly in WHO it is WHO dwells in our hearts:

"If the ministration of death, written and engraved on stones was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:  how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather MORE glorious?

"But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same glory of the Lord, by the Spirit of the Lord!"

"We have this treasure in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us."

Sue Gaither