To be “in Christ” is not so much to receive Christ into my life as it is for Him to receive me into His life. It is to be baptized into his existence and the life he lives in intimacy before God in heaven and in adequacy through me on earth. Have you ever felt inadequate before? It’s not just a feeling, for apart from Christ, it’s a reality. John 15 says that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing. We can do nothing apart from Jesus because we were created that way. We were created to need him, and by that, I don’t mean that we were created to have a relationship with him. What we were created for was more than just a relationship with God. We were created for a special kind of relationship. We were designed to fully participate in his life, and, consequentially, him fully participating in ours.
All that is to say that we were designed to live by his adequacy. “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God.” 2 Corinthians 3:5.
This is an example of living from Christ instead of trying to be adequate for Christ. When you are resting in his ability to be adequate for every situation you face in life, then nothing will intimidate you because it’s got nothing to do with whether you can handle the situation or not. It has nothing to do with how strong you are or how strong your faith is. What matters is how big he is, and of course, he delights in demonstrating his strength perfectly through the gift of your weaknesses offered him step-by-step. Even our weaknesses glorify Him.