Resting in grace

Victoria Gaines reflects on what it really means to live a new life in Christ:

God doesn't expect heroic efforts from me; neither must I suppress my hurt and pain to appear stoic or super-spiritual. What a relief! Because if you cut me, I bleed - just like you. But all He is, He is for me. Taking up the cross is not so much about enduring hardship as it is the daily giving up of my life for His life. Taking up His Cross means I no longer live, the old Vicki died, but Christ now lives in me. I'm responding to the Love that broke my bonds and set me free from self and sin. I trust in His work, not mine. I rely on His grace to live this enabled life.

Now if He's released me from my old life, why resurrect a corpse and gut it out - all in the name of Jesus? That's just crazy. Yet it took me years of bondage, pain, and failure before I was sick of my own flesh. I was tired of the trappings, charades, and "externals" of the so-called Christian life; a hunger grew. I began to see that His Blood took care of my sin, washed it away, and relieved my guilt and shame. But His Cross took care of my flesh (self life), delivering me from what I am (a sinner)! I stopped trying to live by rules and started trusting the life He had given me.

This new life emerged quietly, invisibly, but surely as I relied on the Holy Spirit to nuture His life in me.

Well said, Vicki.