John 3.30 summarizes the Christian life: He must become greater; I must become less.
John the Baptist makes simple both the process and the goal of the Christian life: Jesus must become increasingly clearer to us, in us and through us and we must become increasingly less proud, selfish and self-serving. John arrived at this conclusion because he saw himself as a servant of God.
Our occupation is the redemption of the world to God through Jesus Christ regardless of our vocation. Our vocation funds our occupation but the Christian life is simply being occupied with the work of seeing God’s kingdom come to earth as it is in heaven.
God in Man gave us such an example when He said I have not come to do My own will but the will of Him Who sent me. Our confession of Jesus as Lord identifies both our allegiance to His authority and our commitment to serving Him to His ends.
The process of Jesus being increasingly more real to us and through us is simple but requires a daily plodding of certain disciplines for His greatness to increase and our selfishness to decrease.
The process begins with God’s Word. His ways are not our ways. We must learn His ways in order to submit to His ways and then carry-out His ways.
We need to pray more regularly and more fervently. The prayers God gave us help set our hearts and minds on His objectives. So we pray His kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We pray for more workers to do His will for the world increasingly needs His presence for help and healing. We pray for our leaders that they might be yielded to the Spirit of God so that we have freedom to do the will of God.
Our time with God then must transcend to time with people. It is those who don’t look like Jesus that most often represent Jesus; the poor, the hungry, the naked and the prisoner. Of course every person who does not know Jesus as Savior can be described in these terms for having everything in this world but not God is to have nothing for the world to come.
If God’s Word is not our food we are starving from lack of wisdom. Unless we are clothed with Christ we will stand on our own before God to be judged for all of our unrighteousness. And until the Spirit of God sets us free we remain in bondage to the power and penalty of sin.
This isn’t everything necessary for increasing the presence of Jesus in our lives and through our lives but its certainly a great start. What other ideas do you have?
