The Challenge of Genuine Spirituality

Can the spirituality of the early church be ours today?  Yes it can if we accept the challenge of living Jesus' spirituality and not ours. 

 

The great challenge for genuine spirituality in Christians is to move away from attaining spirituality to receiving spirituality.  We must move away from the current personal spirituality paradigms of believing doctrines or creeds, perfecting our personal thought processes, practicing lists of so called Christian principles or living intense church activity.  We must move to the perfect and perfecting spiritual presence of Jesus who abides in every disciple.  We must move toward Jesus in us as the source of all authentic spirituality.  We must live His already perfected spirituality not develop our own over time.

 

When we are in the presence  of people, we are impacted by their presence.  In fact, some people's presence will drive us crazy over time!  Jesus' spiritual presence, on the other hand, spiritually heals us and makes us sane for love over time.  Pursuing a Jesus in us spirituality is not a spiritual therapy we master and then walk on our own.  It learning  to live continuously in the presence of Jesus who is the perfectly Spiritual Person.  He goes with us and is in us until His spirituality is our spirituality and His life is our life.  Jesus in us spirituality is learning to abide in Christ.  It is to go to Jesus alone for spirituality and stay there forever.

 

All who long for a return of a genuine, original Christian spirituality the path to spiritual life will need to move from increasing their own spiritual information or spiritual activity to increasing their awareness of Jesus' spirituality in them and their cooperation with His eternal spiritual life.  

 

Only when the church's primary  concern for believers is seeing Jesus' spirituality formed in every disciple will we see Christianity expressed in spiritual power as it was in the beginning of the church.

 

By the Spirit of Christ in us there is enough genuine spirituality  in us to make us perfectly spiritual.   Our job is to receive and release His spirituality.  He gives it and we live it.

 

Are we up for the challenge to live Jesus' spirituality?  By His Spirit Jesus in us certainly is ready and all we need to do is receive His spirituality moment by moment and release it as fruit.

 

"For to me to live is Christ."  Phil. 1: 21

"It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me."  Gal. 2:20

 

Bud McCord

Abide International14