Limiting God

I have some more things I want to post that are from the same author I have been posting from. Hope you can get something from them. Part 1

God gave a gift - His Son - and I accepted that gift. I received Jesus Christ. Not only did I believe His work, but I accepted His Person. God's salvation isn't a place or a passage. It is a Person. So Colossians 2:6 tells us, "As ye have received . . . so walk." How did I receive Christ? I received Him by faith and with empty hands. I did nothings toward my salvation - "not by works of righteousness which we have done" (Titus 3:5). I simply realized my need, believed God's answer to my need, and accepted Christ as my Saviour. The moment I accepted Him I was saved, delivered out of Egypt's bondage (a world that held us bondage to sin) by the shed blood of Christ. Also, I was in Christ, and because I was in Christ, I became a new creature.
Now that is perfectly true positionally and potentially, but very often it is not true practically. What I failed to do was to go on - to walk as I had received. I thought that because I had received Jesus as my Saviour, that was that. My sins were forgiven, I was saved, so now I had to be a good boy and live the Christian life. But that is where I got stuck in the wilderness, wandering and limiting God. I thought it was up to me now to live a good life, doing my best to serve Him - but nothing ever seemed to happen. I spent many years wandering in the desert. I wasn't in Egypt any more. I had been delivered, but I found it rather miserable, and sometimes monotonous living in the wilderness. Sometimes I came upon a little oasis which was very thrilling, but it only served to make me long for more such places.
Then one day God opened this verse to me. As I had received Christ Jesus, in just the same way I had to walk, day by day, in Him. I had to walk in Him, not in the wilderness. Jesus Christ is Canaan (the Promised Land). God brought me out so that He could bring me in - in Christ. Praise God, I had discovered the secret of progress. In His mercy, God let me see the simplicity of the whole thing. I just have to walk, receiving. When I came first, I received Christ. Now as I walk day by day, I continue to receive Him. He is all I need. He is made unto me all I can ever want.
So now my daily Christian life is a moment by moment experience of receiving Christ. Whatever problem, fear, anxiety, temptation or frustration comes into my life, it isn't my job to meet it. My job is to expose the whole situation to Christ Jesus the Lord, and then to walk believing that what He has promised H will also perform.
That is what God means when He says in II Corinthians 5:17 that "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." So many of us are positionally and potentially new creatures in Christ, but practically we are still doing the old things, still wandering in the wilderness and getting nowhere. But all things can become new if only we will walk day by day, moment by moment, receiving "all that He is, for all that I need."
---- John E. Hunter ----- Limiting God