Editor’s Note
How are we to understand our union with God in everyday circumstances of confusion, problems, frustrations, and even tragedy? at does it mean that I am Christ in my form, when such obviously negative and difficult circumstances are going on in and around me? When we are in a tight spot, when life’s adverse circumstances have placed us beyond human aid, we are perfectly positioned to be God’s agent’s of redemptive faith. It is only when we are pressed to see our total inability and powerlessness that we can be aroused to faith to see and totally rely on His competence and power. It is only when we see our complete inability to affect change-in a person, a situation, or ourselves-that we come face to face with God: He has involved me personally in this circumstance at this moment for the precise purpose of pressing me to faith to see His answer already in existence in the fourth dimension. Norman says, "Time is a human convenience for pinpointing a fragment of eternity." So in eternity the answer is already in existence: by faith we see this to be a fact, and await its manifestation in the third dimension.
We can see, then, why Paul says "When I am weak, then I am strong." He knew the secret,that human weakness is the indication of super-human strength; shortages and lacks of His supply; failures, of success; perplexities, of solutions; trials, of deliverances. Two chapters in The Deep Things of God are "Need is Evidence of Supply," and "Imperfection Points to Perfection." Exactly. Therefore, it is obedience of faith to change our point of view that is necessary. This is a death, because we are hit with a bar-rage of third dimensional evidence which seems quite real and insurmountable, and we must "die" to the appearance of the difficulty it appears to be. God’s plan is being carried out perfectly in this situation and what looks to me like a problem is in reality (fourth dimension) simply proof that God has the answer already." This death to how we first see a thing is the operation of the cross in our daily lives. We are "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh" We can count it all joy, because before we call He has answered. Our first reaction is meant to be negative, to bring out our faith in His positive. This is the way in which death works in us, but life and restoration in others, how our I can’t becomes His I can.
