Prelude to "The Great Life"

Christine and I have spent the past several months working on a batch of new songs that will be part of a project we are calling "The Great Life." This project is likely to be our most ambitious yet - at least from a spiritual perspective. Sweetbird is an evolution - it is a spiritual work in progress. The Lord is leading the way. We are merely passengers in His vehicle.

Recently, I came across a book by T. Austin-Sparks titled "Spiritual Sight" that talks about what it takes to begin to live the life the Lord wants us to live - what I call "The Great Life." We all must start at the beginning. However, many people don't know where to begin. So what is the beginning of the Christian life? In a word, it is a seeing.

As Sparks says:

"Seeing governs the beginning of the Christian life. It must be a seeing. The very logic of things demands that it shall be a seeing; for this reason, that the whole of the Christian life is to be a progressive movement along one line, to one end. That line and that end is Christ. That was the issue with the man born blind in John 9. You will remember how, after they cast him out, Jesus found him, and said to him, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" and the man answered and said, "And who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?" Jesus said unto him, "Thou hast both seen Him and He it is That speaketh with thee." And he said, "Lord, I believe." And he worshipped him. The issue of spiritual sight is the recognition of the Lord Jesus, and it is going to be that all the way through from start to finish."

Sparks goes on to say: "We may say that our salvation was a matter of seeing ourselves as sinners. But had it been left there it would have been a poor lookout for us."

There are many people I have encountered over the years that seem to be stuck in what I call "sinner and salvation mode." These people have a very superficial understanding of "The Great Life." They know their hearts are wrong and they recognize Jesus as Savior. But, sadly, He is not Lord. I would venture to say that 99 percent of Christians I have met consider Jesus as Savior but not their Lord. And therein lies the major problem with Christianity. As Sparks notes, if Jesus is only our Savior, we don't have much of a future. In other words, if you want to live "The Great Life," Jesus must be Savior and Lord.

How does Jesus become Lord? How do we begin "The Great Life?" As Sparks correctly points out, the whole matter is summed up into seeing Jesus. What happens when you really see Him? Well, let's consider, as Spark does in his book, what happened to Saul of Tarsus. Saul is a great example of a life transformed by the heart of Christ.

As we know, a lot of things happened to Saul - mighty things which nothing else would have accomplished. For example, says Sparks, you would never have argued Saul of Tarsus into Christianity; you would never have frightened him into Christianity; you would never have either reasoned or emotionalised him into being a Christian.

To get Saul out of his religion (Judaism) there needed something more than could have been found on this earth. He saw Jesus, and that did it. After he saw the Lord, he became an emancipated man. Later on in his walk down the narrow path, when Saul is right up against the great difficulty of the Judaisers, tracking and following him everywhere to disturb the faith of his converts, to wreck their position in Christ, and they are inclined to fall away, if they have not already done so (we are talking about those converts and churches in Galatia), he once again raises the whole question as to what a Christian is, and focuses it upon this very point of what happened on the Damascus road.

"The Letter to the Galatians," says Sparks, "really can be summed up in this way: a Christian is not one who does this and that and another thing which is prescribed to be done; a Christian is not one who refrains from doing this and that and another thing because they are forbidden; a Christian is not one at all who is governed by the externalities of a way of life, an order, a legalistic system which says, You must, and You must not: a Christian is comprehended in this saying, "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me: (Gal. 1:15-16). That is only another way of saying, He opened my eyes to see Jesus, for the two things are the same."

Sparks continues:

"The Damascus road is the place. "Who art Thou, Lord? I am Jesus of Nazareth". "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me." That is one and the same thing. Seeing in an inward way: that makes a Christian. "God… hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Cor. 4:6). "In our hearts": Christ, so imparted and revealed within, is what makes a Christian, and a Christian will do or not do certain things, not at the dictates of any Christian law, any more than Jewish, but as led by the Spirit inwardly, by Christ in the heart. It is that that makes a Christian, and in that the foundation is laid for all the rest, right on to the consummation, because it is just going to be that growingly. So the foundation must be according to the superstructure; they are all of a piece. It is seeing, and it is seeing Christ."

"This," says Spark "is a bold statement upon which a very great deal more might be said. It is a challenge. We have to ask ourselves now, On what foundation does our Christian life rest? Is it upon something outward; something we have read, something we have been told, something we have been commanded, something we have been frightened into, or emotionalised into; or is it based upon this foundation. "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me"?

The beginning of "The Great Life" comes with seeing the Lord. When we see Him, we can begin our journey down the narrow path.

May you truly see Jesus and may His heart reign supreme in your heart.

Agape,

Steve