Morning Moments

I Love LIFE! Notice I said LIFE, not my life, for "he who keeps (holds on to) his life will lose it, but he who loses his life FOR MY SAKE AND THE GOSPELS SHALL FIND IT" said Jesus. My life is hid with Christ in God, and HE has become my life! Hallelujah! THAT IS THE TRUTH! So, today I am posed with a choice to accept that truth or deny it. It is my choice and no one can make it for me. I choose LIFE! His LIFE for I am dead and my life is hid with Christ in God.

Come on Phillips. Are you crazy? Yep and I want to stay this way so leave me alone and let me LIVE! I love the illustration that Major Ian Thomas gives about the guy who thought he was dead. No one could change his mind. He was dead! Therapists, analysts, counselors, pastors, no matter who sought to convince him otherwise, to him HE WAS DEAD and that's all there was to it.

One day his doctor asks him if he thought dead men could bleed. He thought for a moment the replied with an emphatic "NO!" The doctor suddenly pricked his finger and out of it came a bead of blood. The guy looks at it in sheer bewilderment, then says, "Well what do you know, dead men can bleed."

It is a sad thing that a man who is alive physically might think he was dead physically. But there is something, Thomas says that is worse than that; that a person who is spiritually dead might think he is spiritually alive. The most pathetic of all is that those of us who are alive by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, born of the Spirit, yet live as though we are spiritually dead!

Isn't it amazing that we who say we belong to Christ, don't seem to belong to Christ. We think and feel and speak as though HE WERE DEAD and we alive without Him. Why can't we see that eternal life is not a quantitative life, but a QUALITATIVE one. It is not a TIME dimension, but a TRUTH dimension. Eternal Life is not that you will live forever with Jesus, though you will. It is that Jesus who is eternal life has chosen to live that quality of life through you and me. This is not fantasy, or fiction, but FACT. Remember what God said to Israel: "I set before you life and death; choose LIFE." It is a choice, so make your choice today and learn to love LIFE!

PRAYER: Thank you, Father, that whoever the SON sets free, he shall be free indeed. Help us today to see that the prison doors have been flung open for us and that the host of heaven bids us to flee FREE.