ANB 77, always a student (4-20-06)

Happy week of my birthday everyone,

Yes it's true, this Sunday I turn 25 years old. Now many people thing that 21 is the last birthday
with any real significance, but that's just not true. At 25 you stop getting hit with the young
driver charge when you rent a car. That is a big deal because that charge is usually more than the
rental car itself. So praise God, I'm very excited.

This coming Wednesday also marks another major mile stone, my last school test. (I still have
the bar in July, but I'm celebrating this Wednesday nevertheless). That's right, after 20 years of
schooling the day is at hand for the last test. Praise God. I love to mess with my siblings, the
oldest of which is in 7th grade, by telling them I'm just about to finish the 19th grade.

So I sit back and think about all I have learned in school and believe by faith that it will all help
quite a bit one way or the other. But then I think about the last two years in particular, when I
have been studying my Lord Jesus Christ. When I began openly professing my Christianity
some people asked me if I would apply to Emory's law and religion program. I told them I was
already in the Holy Spirit law and religion program, the tuition is free and the instruction far
better. Glory to God.

The greatest truths I have learned during this time with God are not capable of being put into
words. I could try, but the reality of God is so much bigger than our language can convey. I
have heard lecture after lecture, even some on religion, and I see that all study with the head is
good, but it doesn't come close to study with the heart. You can't rationalize the reality of God.
Sure, you can point to facts and figures and try to convince someone's intellect that God exists.
You can point to the ridiculousness of the idea that everything we see or know is all here by a
cosmic accident. But you can never tell a person God exists so that they know that they know
that they know He really exists. You can tell a person Jesus is Lord, and they might believe you.
But until they know this in their heart, in their spirit man, then they only know it with head
knowledge, and that is not enough.

I wish I could convey to the unsaved or unborn again what it feels like to have a born again
spirit. I wish all Christians were aware of their born again status and how their hearts have the
very nature of God because they accepted Jesus Christ.

The born again spirit. My heart feels ready to burst. It wants to take over. The love for God
inside me wants to preach from the rooftops that Jesus saves. My heart wants to put my hands
on the sick and see them recover, force my mouth to cast out demons and speak every good
Word. My heart wants to be tested in the ways of righteousness, so that I can show myself
approved to the God I love. My heart wants to read God's Word for hours, pray all night long,
stop sleeping, stop eating, see the nations saved and healed. This born again heart, that has
nothing to do with Byron Howell, is of God, loves God and wants God and only God.
The problem is that this body and this mind haven't always shared this heart's enthusiasm.
Therefore, they must be broken. My ungodly will must be broken. My ungodly flesh must be
broken. My heart, and this infection that it has called God, called Love, called Eternal Life, it
has must spread. It must spread to every part of my being. And it wants to.

This death that tries to remain in me, everything I knew before I was born again was death. It
was sin and sin is the seed for death. Now God, Life, has come in, and it wants to take over.
"That death might be swallowed up in life." (2 Corinthians 5:4).

That is the key, the Life that is in me will swallow and destroy all traces of death that are left in
me.

So here is what I must do. First, I must do everything I can to activate, strengthen and empower
the Life within me. The Life is put in my heart by God. I help spread the Life to my head, my
will, my emotions, and my body, by feeding on this Life. Jesus Christ is the Living Word of
God. In Him is Life, and this Life is the Light of men (John 1:4). By putting God's Word
into myself continually I add to this Life and strengthen it. I activate this Life, and I allow it to
work by faith. Faith is the force that appropriates to you what God's Word promises to
everyone. Faith works when a person believes God's Word in their heart and speaks it with
their mouth. Faith comes by the Word of God. (Read Romans 10). The Life is in Me, I feed
the Life with Life, I activate the Life through faith.

At the same time, I must stop feeding the death that is in me. I must starve it. I must starve all
ungodly desires, I must forget the sins and move away forever. I must not allow more death into
me through sin. Life is trying to take down all the death. But I can't keep adding to Life's
mouthful if I want to see Him swallow.

I will never stop being a student of God. As ages pile on ages in the eternity of eternity I will
never stop learning from Him. But I am blessed to see some things now. Christianity, or Divine
Living, if you will receive it, is the source of all Life. There is no other. The more Christ, or
Divine Life, controls and directs me, the happier, fuller, more joyous, more excited, more
empowered, more prosperous, and more Godly I will be.

If you are born again but never feel a heart passion for God, then this is because you never feed
your spirit man and the Life, while in you, lies dormant. Activate the Life through faith today.
Begin studying God's Word, you will come to love it. Begin fellowshiping with God's people,
you will grow to love them. Begin praying to God, you will know what it is to love Him. "So
when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on
immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in
victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?