What Do You Smell Like?

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I haven’t blogged in a week. Honestly, I’ve had the time. I’ve just been mulling over completing my two month long journey through The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee and not knowing how to begin processing everything from this incredible work.

Rather than try to wrap up neatly something that I have been knee-deep in for so long, I thought I’d let it speak for itself. Without further ado, some of my favorite moments from the last eight weeks (part one):

[Likening Martha’s breaking of the Alabaster jar to our own breaking before Christ] “But if once that point is reached, you may or may not seem to be used in an outward way, but God will begin to use you to create a hunger in others. People will scent Christ in you. The most unlikely people will detect that. They will sense that here is one who has gone with the Lord, one who has suffered, one who has not moved freely, independently, but who has known what it is to subject everything to Him. That kind of life creates impressions, and impressions create hunger, and hunger provokes men to go on seeking until they are brought by divine revelation into fullness of life in Christ.”

“God’s means of delivering us from sin is not by making us stronger and stronger, but by making us weaker and weaker. ... God sets us free from the dominion of sin, not by strengthening our old man, but by crucifying him; not by helping him to do anything but by removing him from the scene of action.”

“God is not out to reform our life. It is not His aim to bring that life to a certain stage of refinement, for it is on a totally wrong plane. On that plane He cannot now bring man to glory. He must have a new man; one born anew, born of God. Regeneration and justification go together.”

“So we can say, reverently, that God never gave us the Law to keep: He gave us the Law to break! He well knew that we could not keep it. “The Law came in… that the trespass might abound” (Romans 5:20). The Law was given to make us law-breakers! ... The Law is that which exposes our true nature. Alas, we are so conceited, and think ourselves so strong, that God has to give us something to test us and prove how weak we are. ...  When we have broken it so completely as to be convinced of our utter need, then the Law has served its purpose. It has been our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that in us He may Himself fulfill it (Gal. 3:24).”

Posted 11.12.2008

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