“If any one has anything to do with Christ Jesus, let him/her have His humility first”. I make this sweeping statement in every Abiding Life Basic Training Course. It is stating that No one can do anything in Christ Jesus without His humility.
In the ‘One Example’ He gave His disciples on the day before He was crucified, He told them “Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you will do it” John.13: 15,17. That ‘one example’ was washing the feet of the disciples.
Refering to the happening in the upper room on that day Paul says ” Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus” Phil.2:5. Jesus Himself referred to His attitude “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and humble in heart” Mat.11: 29

I often wonder how is it possible for Jesus to manage this level of humility! It came to me on last Sunday (10/24/04) afternoon while I was teaching a group of Secular Counselor Trainees in a ‘Christian’ Counselor training facility run by Catholic priests. We were discussing marital oneness and how a wife/husband can accept the spouse without conditions. Unless a person is fully himself/herself, that person will never be able to accept others fully. Then I was asked how does one know he/she if fully himself/herself?

We can see ourselves only when we are in front of an appropriate background.

I turned to the white board and on that board was a pictorial repesenation of marital oneness. On indicating this picture they all agreed they could clearly see the two black parrellel lines with a circle for a head.
“How does it become clear enough to be seen?” After some hesitation and a few wild guesses someone said it is because the whitboard is behind. Through that we established the principle that without the background the foreground does not become clear.

We can see ourselves only when we are in front of an appropriate background. We have no existence if we miss our background. Therein we know what we are and in whom we are. Our fullness in Him is visible only when we see ourselves in Him. In Him we are fully ourselves. A person fully himself/herself and knows that he/she is fully himself/herself can afford to be humble. It was not easy getting across this idea to a secular audience. I feel very comfortable presenting this fact to you who are Abiding in Him.
Therefore, if we are in Christ we are bound to be humble and all that we do would be from that base of humility.

Q.Do you agree with the otherside of Col. 1:27; that is, I in Christ, the hope of glory?

The flesh can continue to develop after we believe in Jesus.

Job 6:11-12, What is my strength, that I should wait? And what is my end, that I should endure? Is my strength the strength of stones, Or is my flesh bronze?
The Bible makes the point that once we have believed in Jesus, the old man is crucified, we receive a new life, and what was true of us is no longer true, what we did we never did, what happened to us never happened to us, for “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation.” The old man is gone but the flesh–the condition of being under the influence of something other than Jesus–has not changed and will never change; we just abide longer with it under His influence, so it may appear that it has changed. The flesh is not improving, nor does God intend for it to; it is His stronghold to drive us back to Him. In fact, once we have Christ within us, the flesh will make us more miserable than it did when we had Adam’s life in us, for now it doesn’t fit what we are. This brings me to an important point: The flesh can continue to develop after we believe in Jesus. All we have to do is walk after the flesh, and the flesh will find new idols, new ways of coping. It will continue to grow. In Fiji I got a fungus, a very tricky thing that started out very small, but when it would itch, it felt so good to scratch it, and it was in the itching that it spread; soon it covered both feet. The pain was intense in the center, but it always felt good to scratch around it. The flesh is the same. Scratch that itch it and it will grow. A perfect example of the flesh’s continuing to expand is its increase in those (men and women) who struggle with internet pornography. This was something unheard of 15 years ago, and now there are few families not affected. Actually, it is worse among believers than unbelievers, for if unbelievers want sex, they will generally just go for it. But the believer draws an invisible line in the sand and tells the flesh, “You can go this far and no further.” To them, porno is not the same as adultery and therefore allowable. There are many in ministry struggling with this new development in flesh expression. This awareness of the weakness of the flesh and its propensity to grow should not discourage us, but rather encourage us to remain near to Him. For we know the moment the Lord is not our focus, we will move into the flesh, which has not improved. God has orchestrated the whole of the Christian life to center on abiding in Him.

No one can be born again by the will of the flesh, insidious in its ability to take the eyes off of Jesus.

Job 34:15, “All flesh would perish together, And man would return to dust.” John 1:13, “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
No one will be born of the will of the flesh. It is impossible. For in the flesh are the senses of man that constantly need feeding. One may think of them as instinct gone amuck. Senses in the body are given attention either by pain or reward, feeding or starving, or consciously avoiding or obsessing on. Either way it is in being activated that they are kept alive and in charge. The greater truth is that the senses want to be activated; the lesser truth is how they are activated, which is by eating from the tree of good and evil. The desire for food (wish fulfillment or fantasy) will keep senses alive just as much as condemnation from eating too much. Look at the anorexic or observe the obese, and both scream “flesh in control.” An overwhelming desire for sex or the condemnation of looking at porno both scream that the flesh has regained control. Thinking of oneself as intelligent or stupid are both still flesh. Again, flesh is simply the senses in control. The east denies the flesh in an attempt to appease it and the west feeds it in an attempt to appease it. Of course, the west doesn’t have a choice in that nothing is enough to satisfy it, nor does the east really choose, since there is ultimately no way to withhold from the flesh. Nevertheless, the flesh is flesh and is hostile to God. Now, why does flesh desire to be in control? It is because flesh desires man to be flesh-centered. If man becomes Christ-centered, the senses of flesh would not be fed but would be sublimated to Christ. The flesh can never be more than a slave, and a rebellious one at that, for by the works of the flesh will no flesh be justified. No one can be born again by the will of the flesh, insidious in its ability to take the eyes off of Jesus. The flesh constantly screams for attention and has a thousand methods at its disposal to get it. Believers and non-believers alike have flesh. The saddest thing is to witness someone who has abandoned his will to flesh. Like a tick, flesh will feed until it explodes and destroys itself. I meet many Christians that struggle with the sin of homosexuality but are not homosexual, and if you were to meet them, you would never guess what their particular deed of the flesh is. However, meet someone who has, by choice, yielded to that area of the flesh, and it is evident in his or her body. Just a few minutes with that person reveal to what they have yielded their flesh. Now, why would God put us in flesh? I am not talking about a physical body, but the desires of the senses that reside in the physical body. Well, it has been said that the greatness of a man is not determined by what he does but rather by what he refuses to do. The man who feeds his flesh through adventure and the procession of praise for victory or the mockery for defeat is not as great a man as he who says, “Not my will but Thy will be done.” Having flesh and its senses allows man the unique opportunity of choice, of living on the earth but not being of the earth, of living to God and not to senses, and the discovery of something higher in this life, spiritual fulfillment. Flesh, or rather the call of the senses to stay alive, is a constant reminder that we must move our eyes to Jesus. It is another stronghold allowing us to stay focused. If God is for us, then who can be against us? Again, the flesh is never a friend; you may buffet it and make it a slave, but it will never be a friend. The flesh is a strange thing in that it cannot live on its own but must live on something that is living. It adapts to resemble the thing on which it lives, but it isn’t really a living thing. When man dies, the fleshly condition of the man dies. It is weird.

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.” John 15:1

I recently returned from Modesto, California; during the course of my last two visits there, John Miller, a tree farmer, has taken the time to show me all the procedures involved in harvesting almonds. I have decided that the strenuous effort involved in bearing fruit does indeed rest on the shoulders of the gardener whose job it is to prune, level the land, water, fertilize, mow, out-and-out baby the trees. The end result is to have all conditions perfect for the trees to accomplish what they do naturally–bear fruit! It is interesting to note that when the trees are laden with almonds, a steel arm grasps the trunk of the tree, an umbrella-type contraption is inverted under the tree, and the arm shakes the tree until it provides the gardener with his hard-earned fruit.

God does it all. We need only attain what believers do naturally as tended to, but sometimes God must shake us to get the fruit that is His.

Now when evening came, His (1) disciples went down to the sea, and after getting into a boat, they started to cross the sea (2) to Capernaum. It had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” So they were willing to receive Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.
John 6: 16-21

Tertullian said that “the soul is naturally Christian”. Was he right? I believe so, for it is only when you see a man accept Christ that his soul is fulfilled and happy. Therefore, to be an unbeliever is to live in a very unnatural state. It is to feel disjointed, empty, lacking something, longing for others to fill the vacuum, lost, and very unhappy. To avoid Christianity is to avoid happiness, it is to set oneself on a course of self
destruct.

To live without Christ, moment by moment, is to toil in the dark. Much of mankind is toiling in the dark, with their eyes on themselves and self-effort. And in this condition they are lost, frantic and within the grasp of death. It is not until our eyes are set on Jesus that we find ourselves immediately filled with all that we desire. We find ourselves there.

Why does man insist on looking away from Jesus? What is our fear? The fear is that He will ask the impossible–to lose ourselves, to lose those things that we have determined will make us happy! And yet we are sad in this state! We fear the loss of our precious little that has not brought happiness.