Speared with Christ

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live,
but Christ lives in me.
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.”

(Galatians 2:20 NIV)

“Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.” (Galatians 2:20 The Message[i])

The summer before his senior year in college, Jim Elliot wrote this prayer in his journal,

“’He makes His ministers a flame of fire.’ Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be a flame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul-short life? In me there dwells the Spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him. ‘Make me Thy Fuel, Flame of God.’”[ii]



Thought...

What was Jim saying, when he said “a flame is often short-lived?”



His journal illustrates an internal conflict, “Can I bear the thought of merely being a short-lived flame.” Why do we so fear the thought of a short-life, be it physically or time in the spot-light?

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
(Galatians 6:14 NIV)

[i] E. H. Peterson, 2003. The Message : The Bible in contemporary language . NavPress: Colorado Springs, Colo.
[ii] Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor, (New York: Harper and Row), 1957.