Life in His Presence

“Rejoice in the Lord always.  I will say it again: Rejoice!”

Two words really get me here:  rejoice and always.  Let’s talk about “always” for a second.  Let’s be honest, “rejoicing always” seems to be an idealistic “nice-if-you-could” notion.  But Paul lays this out as a command.  By default, being that this is in Scripture, this command goes beyond Paul and becomes a scriptural command from the Lord.

First of all, I don’t feel like rejoicing always.

I feel down at times.  I feel sluggish occassionally.  Even hopelessness tries finding its way into my head and emotions.  Rejoicing seems to be a stretch even on occassion when you look at the world we live in and the difficulties we face.  BUT!!! there is a very very very (very very very) important phrase that we will get to in a second that changes everything in terms of being able to rejoice always.  Stick with me here.

Rejoicing is an exhuberant expression.  It is not passive nor void of emotion.  In rejoicing there is joy.  There is the excited expression of joy.  Again, underlining the question – how could we ever Rejoice Always?

Paul is so adamant about this that he says:  “I will say it again:  Rejoice!”

Here is the phrase I believe most believers don’t catch.  I lose sight of it too!

“In the LORD”

You want a new experience in reading the New Testament?  Start noticing every time Paul uses those three words and the various combination of those three words (i.e. in him, in Christ, through Christ…I can do all things).  This is the secret power of Paul’s life.  He realized the mystery of the revelation of the New Covenant was “Christ in me”.  What did Jesus say when he was still with his disciples?

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ” – John 15:5

As I stated earlier, my struggle with “rejoice always” has to do with me and me living in this world.  I have a fallen sinful nature that consistently makes me self-aware and self-focused – do I have to mention sinfully selfish as well.  And I live in a world that is full of selfishly sinful people that are out for number one.

That is the trickle down effect of the fall in Genesis 3.  It is a reality.  BUT…it is not the only reality.  Apart from Christ, that is my reality.  In Christ, I find that another world lives inside of me.

Believers, we need to get this until we’ve got it.

Before we can change the world around us, we must surrender the world inside of us to Christ.

In Christ, we can powerfully touch this world as Paul did.  But many of us do not have the clear revelation that Paul had.  Many of us still fall into the trap of serving God because it is the right thing to do.  Paul was serving God when he was killing Christians.  You say he wasn’t serving God the right way.  But I say he didn’t know.  He was blinded to the right way because his sinful nature was all that he knew.

No amount of effort on our part will remove our sinful selfish nature.  When we try to serve God with that nature still in tact, it always results in a blind effort to do what we think God wants us to do.  As result, we can go most of our lives serving God in the way we think is right while in the end getting knocked off our high horse to discover we were doing it all wrong.  That is what happened to Paul.  He was stunned and dumbfounded.  Here he was zealously trying to rid God’s world of this scandulous false religion to later find he was persecuting God himself.  That had to hurt.  In humility, Paul realized that his only safety net from himself was “in Christ”.

Here are a few verses to chew on:

• “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” - Rom. 6:11
• “He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.” – 1 Cor. 4:17
• “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.” – Eph. 6:10
• “Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God.” 2 Cor. 3:4
• “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation…” - 2 Cor. 5:18

When you learn to dwell in Christ and he dwells in you, you’ll find that the other world inside of you…the world of his living presence…is a rejoicable world.  You will find that rejoicing in the Lord always isn’t so difficult.  Why?  Becaue Christ is always victorious!  He doesn’t reveal his victory first in the world.  He reveals his victory first in you.  And as you learn to rejoice in him, His victory will spill into the streets of this fallen world shining forth his light to a lost and fallen Creation that God loved so much as to give up His Son – that whosever will believe will have everlasting life – in Him.

“Again I say:  Rejoice!”