I remember years ago a conversation I had with a student at the Bible college I was attending. I was working for a ministry in Birmingham, Alabama, and was doing Bible college part-time. I had the privilege to minister to a number the students about entering into the reality of the Christian life lived by Christ Himself. One of the joys I participated in during those years was to take students down to the campus of UAB and teach them how to share the gospel with students, and if the Holy Spirit created the opportunity, lead them to make a personal decision for Christ. That can be kind of scary if you’ve never walked up to a stranger and asked them to give you the opportunity to talk to them about Jesus. One of the things our flesh hates the most is the whole idea of being rejected, so I would remind them that they would go in childlike faith and simply open their mouth, Jesus Christ would do the work through them. He would know exactly what to say and how to act while communicating with the students. It was fun to watch these young people who were in Christ take Jesus out for a spin and experience Christ through them ministering to others on the campus of UAB.
I was talking about this one evening to some students in their dorm room at the Bible college (I was an older student and didn’t live on campus). One of the young men who may have been a senior said to me something like this, “I’ve been hearing what you are saying to us about Jesus Christ living the Christian life through us and Jesus doing the witnessing through us. Therefore, last weekend I sat here in the dorm, and I asked Jesus to lead some people to Christ through me, and not one person got saved. Therefore, I’ve concluded that this whole business of Christ living through us is about passivity, and it makes no sense, and it doesn’t work.” When he finished, I smiled at him and said, “Remember the words that I spoke. I said Jesus Christ wants to lead people to Himself through you, therefore he needed you to make your body totally available to him so that he could position you anywhere lost people might be so that he could speak through your lips, love through your heart, and change somebody’s life through your personal availability to all that Jesus is in you and through you.” I’m not really sure if he ever got it, but I was curious as to how the enemy had deceived him from understanding what it means to be in union with Christ. Union with Christ means that you have been placed into the life of Jesus and His story so that that He wan through your life and your life story. Christ living the Christian life has nothing to do with passivity. It’s about resting and His activity, and He is very active. This is the great adventure. You and I get to be the body through which Christ continues to live His life, experiencing Him do all the things he always does in the context of our daily living.