LIVING PRESENCE IN YOU

Before I went to India on a mission trip some years ago, I chanced to read a book by an Australian man who was in surgery and unconscious on the operating table. In this state he had a vision in which Jesus appeared to him and told him that one did not have to be in his state of altered consciousness to be one with God. Nor did one need to have a near death experience or be part of a manifestation of the Spirit. One merely needed to live in the Reality of the Incarnation. Anyone can know this for themselves if they take the time to study the New Testament rather than coast along on a religious travelator of partial truth.

REALITY AT HAND AND IN YOU
The incarnation is the basis of new creation life. It means Christ for us, Christ in us and Christ expressed as us. Jesus is our rest from self-vindication, the drive to earn acceptance with God and the cure for Christian workaholism. Jesus is our rest from human restlessness. In Jesus you have better than a sabbath day. You have a sabbath life. Delivered from the Martha mentality, we live with Jesus and Jesus lives in us. When our identity is in Jesus we are at rest to grow the true self and delivered from the construction of the false self.

MOUNT FIELD NATIONAL PARK
As a youth I loved to walk with friends in the Tasmanian wilderness. We took Bibles with us and spent some time reading scriptures on our walks. This was not harmful, but done without the knowledge that Christ is in us and with us where we are and that we don’t have to conjure Him ourselves by devotional means.

There is a mode of Christian living called ‘Bible Deism.’ It involves the Bible as a substitute for the presence of Christ with us and in us. In this vein a pastor once urged us to learn our ‘doctrinal texts’, so that if ever we were in a hard place, we could recite some promises. He was oblivious of the fact that God is with us by the Spirit personally all the time wherever we are. He had no knowledge of the Spirit in us and with us and was the product of our making our own steps to Christ. A form of Pelagianism and morbid self-help.

A life lived from the law is mechanical and a parody of our inclusion in God as a state of being. Living in the oneness with God that is ours by the Spirit we have no need of that poverty style religion.

INCLUDED IN THE CIRCLE
Oneness with the trinity is  what Jesus spoke of in John 17 and what He meant when he urged, ‘On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20 NIV. This is the day we are born again. It’s the day we move from religion to the Kingdom of daughters and sons. In Jesus we have the kind of oneness with God that Jesus has with Father and Holy Spirit. There’s no legalism in this. It’s pure and simple union with God. This union is continuous in the covenant that is Christ our life.

REALITY IS CHRIST
The fact is, that the big deal of our post-cross life is that in Jesus we have become incarnated with the presence of God. Baxter Kruger calls this, ‘The Trinity in you.’ The apostle John called this, Christ come in our flesh.’ Jesus urged, ‘Realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you’ John 14.20. It’s not poetry or religiosity. It is shadow to real. Real peace, real healing for our person is Christ in our inner being. It’s Kingdom life. Did you know we can get to heaven without ever having represented the Kingdom of God. Not because we were rebels. But because we represented religion, when we could have been a manifestation and a multiplication of Christ our life.

DIRECTLY
In his book Experiencing God Directly – The Way of Christian non-dualism, Davis Marshall writes, “This book is about experiencing God directly. It is not meant to give the reader new spiritual insights or a better understanding of God. It is not trying to communicate theological knowledge about God gleaned from Scripture and expressed in ideas and concepts. It is not about designing a worship service with the right mix of music, words, and symbolism in order to prompt a religious experience of God. It is not about achieving an elevated mental state through spiritual disciplines like prayer and meditation. This book is meant to point the reader to direct unmediated awareness of God. Complete, all-consuming, experiential oneness with God.” (1) You have a oneness with God as your life.

DIRECT ACCESS TO LIFE
This is not a pipe dream and is as much different from legalistic pieties as a dead horse is from a live one. It’s about you living in what is your inheritance: Oneness with God - because God has made you one with Himself in Jesus Christ. Any conference that is really life-giving is less concerned with the theme and more involved in speaking words of spirit and life because in oneness with God we are alive with His life.

INIQUITY
This is the ultimate grace. Keep in mind that the most subtle and ultimate sin is to reject grace by watering it down or ignoring it altogether. Understand that to promote a diluted gospel is worse than many sins of the flesh. Worse because it extends the kingdom of lies and captures innocent people in limited forms of themselves.

FULLNESS DEFINED
The fullness of the God-head bodily is lived in Jesus Christ. When we agree with Jesus that He has drawn us into His life, the fullness of the God-head bodily lives in us. In Father we become sons in spirit and in truth. In the fullness of the trinity about us and in us we become alive with God’s life. As a person, you are the expression of the trinity – or an un-ignited tree in the desert. The inheritance of all is to be a burning bush.
 
(1) Davis, Marshall. Experiencing God Directly: The Way of Christian Nonduality (p. 1). Marshall Davis. Kindle Edition.