Prayer & Bible Center

The old pearl divers had magnificent lungs. They could last out under water for minutes at a time. But even they soon had to come up gasping for air. There was a limit to what even their lungs could take. The modern diver has no such problem, for he takes his oxygen tank with him. And as long as he follows the regulations he can stay under water for a considerable amount of time, and never have a problem. Such is the wonder of progress.

And that is the question that we must ask ourselves. What progress have we made in our Christian lives? Do we still depend on taking a deep breath and diving into life each day, or do we take our oxygen with us?

The old pearl divers had magnificent lungs. They could last out under water for minutes at a time. But even they soon had to come up gasping for air. There was a limit to what even their lungs could take. The modern diver has no such problem, for he takes his oxygen tank with him. And as long as he follows the regulations he can stay under water for a considerable amount of time, and never have a problem. Such is the wonder of progress.

And that is the question that we must ask ourselves. What progress have we made in our Christian lives? Do we still depend on taking a deep breath and diving into life each day, or do we take our oxygen with us?

For the problem for many of us is that we read the Bible in the morning, (I am assuming that we do), pray a brief prayer, and then having refreshed ourselves and taken a deep breath, dive into the new day hoping that our oxygen will last out. We forget that we should be taking our oxygen with us.

Paul knew what it meant to do this for he said, ‘Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me’ (Galatians 2.20). He took his oxygen, ‘Christ lives in me’, with him each day. And Jesus’ offer to us is the same. He says, ‘Look, I am with you always’ (Matthew 28.20). He does not want to be left behind. He wants to go with us as we live out our lives each day. Indeed He wants to live out His life through us. But the question is, do we want Him?

For there is a conscious decision to be made by each one of us, because He will not come with us if we are going to ignore Him. That is why He says through Paul, ‘put off the old person, which is spoiled by total selfishness and greed, and be continually renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new person, which in the likeness of God is created in goodness and true Christ-likeness’ (Ephesians 4.22-24 paraphrase).

It is true that in one sense that is what becoming a Christian initially involves, for Paul says that once we are truly ‘in Christ’ we experience Christ’s life-transforming power so that we are new creatures, with old things passing away and everything becoming new. In other words it involves a commitment to being a new person as a result of Christ’s transforming power (2 Corinthians 5.17). Anything less than that is not salvation. But these words in Ephesians were written to Christians who had already experienced that, and thus they were written to ALL of us. It is therefore something that we have to consciously do every day. We have to renew the decision to put off the old person and put on the new every morning. We have to recommit our lives to Christ. We have to strip off what is unsuitable. And we must then put on what is suitable. We must ‘deny ourselves and take up our cross daily’ (Luke 9.23). That is what being a Christian involves. And then once we are properly dressed with the right attitudes and aims He wants to go out with us into the day, so that He can live out that renewed life through us. He wants to be our oxygen tank. His plan was that we should ‘never walk alone’.

Notice how close this is to what our modern divers do. They do not think that they can just jump into the water as they are. Before entering the water they strip off their old clothing, put on their wetsuits, don their oxygen tanks, and after checking that they are working properly, in they go. They ensure that they are properly equipped for what they intend to do. And that is what we must also do daily if we want to be pleasing to Christ. We must strip off our old lives, and don our spiritual wetsuits each morning.

For, of course, our divers have to recognise that they cannot go into the water dressed as they like. They cannot take with them all the selfish comforts of life. If they want to ‘live’ in the water then everything must be aimed to that end. All that is unsuitable must be left behind. They are going into an environment that is the opposite of the one that they usually face. And if we want to ‘live in the Spirit’, it must be the same for us. We are going into a difficult environment for we must ‘no longer live the rest of our time in the flesh committed to the desires of men, but committed to the will of God’ (1 Peter 4.2).

And that may well be our problem. It may be that we do not want to take Christ with us into our daily lives because of what it would mean for us. We like to think that we can have Him and keep our old lives at the same time. We like to have Him hidden away in our bedrooms, but we do not want Him to interfere in how we live. We do not want to strip off everything that is unsuitable for living for Christ. We want to have our cake and eat it. Listen then to what He says to us. ‘Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?’ (Luke 6.46). In other words, He is saying, you cannot do that and call yourself a Christian.

For the truth is that if we want to live the Christ life it requires us to be renewed each day. It requires us to constantly put off the old life, until it no longer has any hold over us. And it means yielding ourselves to Him daily, and following Him, asking Him to live out His life through us. Our prayer must be, ‘Live out your life through me, O Lord my Saviour’.

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