Ephesians 2:1  And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2  in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3  among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

4  But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5  even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6  and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7  so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8  For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9  not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

11  Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12  remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

Ephesians 3:7  Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8  To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9  and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, 10  so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11  This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12  in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

II Corinthians 3:12  Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, 13  not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. 14  But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. 15  Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts.

16  But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18  And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Hebrews 10:19  Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20  by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21  and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22  let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Romans 5:1  Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2  Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3  More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5  and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

• Advent # 5 WHY HAS JESUS COME? So we might draw near to God | Even a Vapor
• five years ago ~ for your joy (AND an inheritance | Richard Sibbes & the Sealing of the Spirit)
• Advent #1 WHY HAS JESUS COME? that we might have life & life more abundantly
• Advent #2 WHY HAS JESUS COME? to give his life as a ransom for many
• The Gospel: Penal substitution? Really? Yes, really!
• A little child shall lead us: Christ died for our sins (precious penal substitution)
• the priest shall make atonement
• out of the mouth of an atheist ~ the Christmas sermon you may not have heard
• O, leprous soul, hear Freedom's declaration
• First Week of Advent: The Most Scandalous Bailout Ever

• Phebe Bartlet – a child put in our midst ~ "Do you love Me?"
• "Happy are they who can say..." ~ J.C. Philpot | Letter 139 on assurance & fighting for joy
• postcards from England: are we excited over a dead fish and a car wreck? (considering the glorious possibilities)
• update w/ excerpt: Lloyd-Jones' sermons on the role of experience in Christianity
• The flags unfurled ... Christ's eternal banner | Lloyd-Jones ~ a third type of assurance
• The Father's Inheritance (Eleven days' journey ~ A lamentation & an exhortation)
• Naphtali News: God speaking to me about my failures & the one thing needful (a post on the Holy Spirit)
• As a deer pants ... Is your soul panting for God? (Psalms 42 & 43)
• Be a sanctuary to me, O Lord (Isaiah 8:14)
• "And Jacob was left alone" ~ Don't waste your loneliness
• Where do you go when the world is unlovely? (Psalm 84 & the theology of Biblical counseling)
• Blessed Thirst in the Valley of Baca ~ Psalm 84

Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Emphasis mine.

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Champaigne_shepherd.jpg / CC BY-SA 3.0 - {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}

   
Many Christians think once they're saved, they don't need Christ!

Some are primarily concerned about getting a ticket out of hell, and are looking forward to heaven – rather than being concerned about how they live here, and that's a very low view of Christianity and salvation (and if you persist in that, I'd seriously question you as to whether you are really saved or not – for faith without works is dead and we are warned time and again not to receive God's grace in vain).

Others make the dreadful mistake of thinking they can live the Christian life and fight spiritual battles with their own resources. How foolish that is! The Christian life is a life of spiritual warfare (e.g. - Ephesians 6:10-20 & II Corinthians 10:1-6). Since God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins (Colossians 1:13-14), and because the devil is the enemy of Christ, he is also the enemy of all those who have been united to Christ by grace through faith. We must keep in mind that the devil is continuing to prowl day and night, constantly scheming and lying, seeking ways to devour us and to entangle us, to keep us from fixing our eyes on Jesus and running the race set before us.

We will not be able to live and thrive and bring glory to God in the Christian life unless we come to see that the God who delivered us from the domain of darkness in the first place is the one to whom we must continue to turn and to ask for fresh supplies so we might press in our race, to keep walking the kingdom of light – similar to how the Israelites had to go out and collect manna for each day. Christ is our whole life. He is not only our justification, He is also our sanctification (I Cor. 1:30).  How can we expect to live the Christian life apart from the life of Christ in us?!

In Psalm 18, David brings a song of praise and thanksgiving to God commemorating and celebrating the great deliverances God granted him, exalting and exulting in God, his strength (see also II Samuel 22).

Here's David, who was soon to be made king over all Israel – and yet see how humble he is: notice how he refers to himself as a servant of the Lord. Though David will be king, he is ever mindful who is the King of kings. And David doesn't take one iota of credit for the victories – but he rightly ascribes it all to God's merciful and gracious provision. Throughout the whole Psalm, David readily and happily acknowledges that God alone is his strength and that God alone gave him the victory, thus rendering to God all the praise, honor and glory due His name.

David starts off with these words:

And then David continues throughout the Psalm fervently declaring the many ways the LORD delivered him, boasting in God as his strength and professing his continued reliance on God. (I'd encourage you to read prayerfully through the whole psalm.)

And because it is Leap Day, the second half of verse 29 got my attention:

It seems to me that many, many Christians have walls that God is calling them to leap over, but they're failing, and they keep failing. Why? Many times it is because they have not come to know the LORD as their strength as David did. They keep trying to fight spiritual battles in their flesh. They keep turning to their own resources, wisdom, strength and ingenuity, and, as a result, they remain impotent – for they've not come to know the power of the Holy Spirit at work in them. They keep trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps! They keep turning to secular books and counselors and twelve step programs, etc., rather than turning to the living God Himself. Should not God's people seek their God? Should not God's people seek their God as their strength?

You may not be leaping over walls because you've not come to know the living supply of Jesus Christ through His Holy Spirit. In fact, some of you who profess to be Christians may not be leaping because you've never been born again. If you have never been born again, God's Holy Spirit has not come to dwell in you, and you don't have that vital connection with the Lord Jesus Christ, as the branch abides in the vine; therefore, there's no way you can expect to know and experience Jesus Christ as your strength.

Or, perhaps some of you have been able to leap over some walls – and in fact, compared to most people, you're looking pretty good – however, you're not really leaping by the power of God, instead you're relying on your own strength. You've never come to know God as your strength. You have fallen into the all-American, Pharisaical snare of self-reliance. You've never come to end of yourself and the end of your own strength, so you might begin to cry out to ask for and to know God's strength. As so you function as a Christian primarily in your own fleshly strength. However, that way of life is contrary to the life God intends for the Christian:  the Christian is to put no confidence at all in the flesh and to live by the Spirit. In Galatians, Paul warns us: having been born again and started the Christian life in the Spirit, we must not return to the flesh!

Many of us hold up Biblical figures and other saints from Christian history, and we're tempted to think they had something we don't have. Well, what they had first of all was an understanding that they were NOTHING apart from Christ, they had NOTHING apart from Christ, and they could do NOTHING apart from Christ! They saw their total insufficiency and their need to rely on God alone, their need to know Him as their strength – and that experiential knowledge is what drove them to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help in their time of need. And they saw every moment as a time of need! Consider this testimony of the apostle Paul:

You may never have gotten so low and so desperate and so needy that you cried out to God so you might know Him as your strength: to really know Him – not just recite God is your strength as a Bible verse, not just sing God is your strength in a hymn on Sunday morning, not just listen to someone sing God is your strength in a YouTube video, but to know God as your strength the way David did. You may never have come to the place where you were faced with such a high and huge and thick and insurmountable wall, that you finally cried out to God in desperation, "Who is sufficient for these things? Be my Strength! I am not sufficient! Without You I can do nothing!"

That was my position as a Christian for over twenty years. I was leaping over some walls, and I was engaged in some so-called "good works," but I regret to say that many, perhaps most of those, were done out of my own flesh. But then there came a time several years ago when a Christian had asked me to forgive an offense – and I couldn't do it – and I wouldn't do it. I was the unforgiving servant (Matt. 18:21-35) – and in a very dangerous position! But thanks be to God, in spite of myself, God's grace pursued me, and in God's command to me to forgive another as He had forgiven me, I began to see how much greater God's gift of salvation and forgiveness was toward me than I ever imagined, and how great a sinner I was, that I really was a wretch, though I'd sung it for years in "Amazing Grace" – after that time I could truly confess from the heart that I, Karen, was a wretch – and at that point, grace really did become amazing to me for the first time! The Holy Spirit convicted me and showed me how pitiably small the offense was that I was asked to forgive in comparison with all my sins that God forgave me for Christ's sake! And I found myself able to desire and then to do what I could not do in my own strength – for God gave me the desire and the ability to do His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-14): so I was able to forgive as the Lord had forgiven me. Impossible with Karen, but possible with God! Hallelujah! He was my strength! Without Him I could do nothing, but with Christ I could do all things!

Since that time, God has continued to show me time and time again that without Him I can do nothing, absolutely nothing at all. And as soon as I become puffed up and begin to think I can do anything without Him, thanks be to God, He knocks me back down again to the dust to show my utter insufficiency and my total dependence on Him. Oh, yes, it's certainly painful – but it is profitable! Blessed is the man whom God chastens!

When I was recently convicted to send a message explaining the Gospel to an unsaved family member, I knew that God had given me that desire, but I had nowhere else to turn but to God, for I knew in and of myself I was wholly insufficient. I was tempted to fear the repercussions, I was tempted to please man rather than God and shrink back from following through, and I knew I had no words to write at all except what God would supply – and so I prayed God would be my strength, that His Spirit would strengthen me to fulfill the desire He had placed in me. And all glory to God alone, He was my strength – and He strengthened me to leap over that wall – and God wants to do the same in all His children, so His name alone might be magnified.

I love these two passages for they show us how by our God we can leap over walls, and not only that – they show that our coming to know God as our strength and having His strength work in us brings Him glory.

God is all about His glory, and God receives no glory when we rely upon our own strength – even though we may be leaping over some walls, and we may be looking good to ourselves, to other Christians, or to the world. But anything we do that isn't done by the power of Christ in us brings no glory to God. God alone is to be our strength and our boast and our glory:

What wall stands before you that you have been unable to leap over? Have you come to know Christ as your strength, or are you continuing to walk the vain, dangerous, and God-dishonoring road of self-sufficiency? Are you continuing to attempt to live the Christian life in your own flesh and robbing God of the glory due His name? Will you ask God to show you your insufficiency, so you might come to know God's sufficiency and come to know Him to be your strength, so like David, you might leap over a wall? Will you ask God to grow your knowledge of Him and your trust in Him so you might lay aside your own fleshly efforts and embrace Him as your strength, so you might sing with David: "I love you, O LORD, my strength... by my God I can leap over a wall!" ... and confess with the apostle Paul:  "I can do all things through him who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13).

• Can two walk together... Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit...
• the poor & needy & joy ~ Psalm 35:9-10 | letter 105 on assurance & fighting for joy
• your resolution - "Divine Intervention" by Lecrae
• Naphtali News: God speaking to me about my failures & the one thing needful
• Why not pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit
• why we need a new heart (Bible reading - Matthew 5)
• Bible Reading: Ephesians 4 and 5-The New Man
• trusting the eagles' wings (reliance on the Holy Spirit)
• Blessed dependence ~ "Leaning upon her beloved"
• His Spirit ... His people
• Postcards from God in England: sanctification is gloriously messy!
• "As your days, so shall your strength be"
• "Dependence" by William Cowper
• Birthday reflections ~ "Keep me an infant" (Isaiah 46:1-4)
• Tonight I am weak . . .

Scripture quotations unless otherwise indicated are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyright ©2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Work found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Messene_01.jpg  / CC BY-SA 3.0 / by Herbert Ortner.