ENJOYING
THE WORD—DAILY

"Wow! Look at that!" My brother was pointing to the dash panel on the two-place glider we were flying. The rate of climb indicator showed we were being thrust upward at the rate of 6,000 feet a minute! Any moment we knew we'd be spit out the top of this powerful thermal that was flinging us skyward! Then it happened. Suddenly, we were motionless in the sky. I looked at the altimeter...10,800 feet! Why—it was only seconds ago that the tow plane jerked us off the desert floor. No wonder people become addicted to glider flying.

To what can I compare this thrill? Some sky scrapers have express elevators that make rapid ascents, but not with this kind of thrill. Maybe the wilder roller coasters with their steep dives come as close as anything. However there is an experience that surpasses being hurled thousands of feet into the sky and left to float on a cushion of air. That is the thrill of being caught up in Christ! Finding yourself in the arms of the One Who made you and hear Him say, "I love you and will never leave you nor forsake you!"

 That will make your spirit soar!

Many claim to be close to Christ, but when you see them after church—LUNCH is more real than Jesus! Where is the electricity? Where's the fire that comes from intimacy with Christ? Where is the excitement that gets a person "hooked" on Jesus? Where is the joy that makes your heart sing all day? You don't see that, do you?

JOINED TO A LORD WE CANNOT SEE!

We worship a God we cannot see, feel or hear. The problem is best defined in the saying: "OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND!" You know how that is. Unless things are kept before us, our minds quickly go to something else. And this applies to Jesus as well. How come we have this problem? Ah, we live in the age of the Holy Spirit.

Do you know about this age? When Jesus was on earth in a body, there was no way He could transfer His life to others. If you were to take it from Him, it would be murder. For Him to give His life to another would be suicide. No, the only way for a person to HAVE Jesus' life, is to HAVE Him in their hearts. The apostle John says..."AMEN!"

"He that has the Son HAS life and he that has not the Son of God, has NOT life" (1.John 5:12). One must have the Son to have His life. There is no other way.

BUT HOW
CAN PEOPLE
HAVE JESUS?

A person cannot experience this thrill unless the Lord is REAL TO HIM. Yes, he can hear about Jesus and ask the Lord into his heart and be saved. He might even get involved in a church and serve in some kind of a job for the Lord. Beyond that, he might even be part of a Bible study group. But where is the thrill! Look around your church next Sunday. Study the faces. Is the excitement there? Does the thrill of Christ radiate from within?

In a body, Jesus wasn't available to anyone. You can't stuff one body inside another. If you could, then only one person could have Jesus. Therefore it was necessary for Jesus to shift from operating in a body to operating as a spirit. As the omnipresent Spirit of God, He is AVAILABLE to all who want Him. This is precisely what happened. On the day of Pentecost, the Lord returned in the Spirit to live inside all who would open their hearts to Him (John 14: 20). And this program will continue until the Lord appears in the sky (1 Thess. 4:17). Then the program will shift from faith to sight (Rev. 1:7).

For now, we live by faith. With Christ in us, we are indwelt by our unseen God. Therefore we are faced with the problem of trying to live for a God we cannot see—and trying to please Him with our lives. That's rough. Why? We're used to things we can taste, touch, feel, hear and smell. To us, our cars, homes and jobs, as well as our families and friends, make up the real world. We're used to things we can eat and enjoy, not spirits. Dealing with spirits is foreign to us, even though we know that God is Spirit (John 4:24).

That's why I said that lunch is more real to most Christians than is Jesus.

MAKING CHRIST REAL

Here's the challenge: How can we, who are locked into a physical world, know and enjoy the unseen Lord Who lives inside us? We have to find a way or we'll never live the kind of life that pleases Him. As long as family and financial problems are more real to us than He is, we'll be plagued with fears and worries and doubts. But who wants to live like that? Jesus wants us to live above those  things,  but  that  will  never  happen until He becomes more real to us than our problems. When He becomes that real, our problems no longer disturb us.

So the big question is: How do we make Christ more real? The answer is—God has provided the very means for doing this. There is only one thing in all the world that can make Jesus real to us—the Word of God.

He is NOT REVEALED ANY PLACE ELSE.

Neither the majesty of the mountains, nor the wisdom of scholars can do this for us. Only the Bible reveals Jesus. All we have in this world is the Word of God on the outside and the Holy Spirit on the inside—and that's it.

BUT NOT OVERNIGHT

A person can't sit down and say, "I'm going to make Christ real." It takes time to build the reality of Christ in a person's life. If the Bible, with the New Testament in particular, is the only tool that can make Christ real, it follows a person must spend time in the Word. How much time? You'll laugh at this, but FIVE MINUTES A DAY will do it—if you read with the eyes of your heart You see, you can read for days with the eyes of your head and not get much. Why? Christianity is more caught than taught. We catch spiritual things with our hearts.

You may think 5 MINUTES A DAY is scarcely any time at all. Granted, it may not seem like much to give someone Who has died for you, but wait until you try it. On a daily basis, those 5 minutes are hard to come by. Satan is on hand to see that you have other things to do. Actually it's a fight—but it's worth it.

Five
Minutes
A Day

The more real Jesus is to you, the more exciting He becomes. The more real He is, the more you want to spend time with Him and the more thrilling His presence becomes. The more real He is, the more FUN you can have with Him. From then on, the thrill of Christ will launch your spirit like a glider catapulted 2 miles above the earth and left to soar across the face of the sky.

WHY DID I WRITE THIS ARTICLE?

It is one thing to tell you what it is like when Jesus is REAL to you, quite another to tell you how to go about making Him real. In an earlier article, I announced the coming of... "LET YOUR SPIRIT SOAR." This marked the coming of an entirely new kind of daily devotional—one that causes the power of the Word to build in you. Not the "thought for the day" type, of which there are so many.  This one is designed to bring you the reality of Christ.

Click Book for More about LET YOUR SPIRIT SOAR

If you read the passages with the EYES OF YOUR HEART, you'll find yourself in spirit-to-spirit communication with the Lord. The communication may seem weak at first, that's to be expected. It has to grow. In time, you'll find the Lord becoming more and more real. By the end of a year you'll find your troubles bothering you less as the promises of God fortify you more. Then you'll be able to cope with practically everything that comes your way. Having read this article, can you now say...

"Lord Jesus, 5 minutes a day isn't a lot of time. I really would like to give it to you. If you'll help me, I'll try to find a way to do it."

If you can say that to Jesus and mean it, then take a look at the page where the devotional "LET YOUR SPIRIT SOAR" is displayed. Check the features. You can start the very day your copy arrives. And when you've gone through the 365 days of your first year, start through it again. You'll enjoy it even more the second time around. You'll be giving copies as gifts and using certain of the lights to bring devotions to your group. And you'll be good at it, because you will have discovered for yourself how to ...

LET YOUR SPIRIT SOAR!

This article is Copyright 2001 by Dr. C. S. Lovett and is found on www.cslovettbooks.com