RESURRECTION RESOURCES
19th May 2021
After Saul of Tarsus met Jesus on the road to Damascus, he utterly changed. He writes of his experience in terms of - blind, but now having sight - death, but now living. It was as if “death” took place before Ananias arrived and spoke the words that would define his new direction in life.
When he was filled with the Holy Spirit, not only could he see, but he had a living connection with the risen Jesus now alive in the “new Paul”. He started to live this resurrected life, drawing power from an internal supernatural source, no longer using human resources to keep the law and out perform his contemporaries.
He describes what happened as death and resurrection. In Galatians 2:20 he declares, “I have been crucified with Christ, I no longer live, Christ lives in me.” Elsewhere he declares how everything he once gloried in counts as nothing compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus his Lord.
As you follow the record of Paul’s life through the Acts and the Epistles, you see a man living out of heavenly resources, often stretched to the limit, physically and mentally, but always drawing off the inner resources of the Spirit, Who is living in him and through him. He declares that he wants to be more dead in order to experience more life - but he has set his course to live by faith and to tap into the life available because of Jesus.
I believe this pattern of living should be our blueprint - living by the Spirit - drawing supernatural resources, being in such living contact that life is flowing into and out of us. Jesus said, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” John 4:32 and “I can do nothing by myself only what I see the Father doing.” John 5:19
We are called to live, die and then be resurrected into a new life with new resources, and under new ownership - it’s called “born again” and the contrast between what was and now is - is extreme!
So many believers are not living the new life, but trying so hard to improve the old; to keep the rules, to somehow heal and restore the old life, rather than let it die and let the new one come. The struggle is relentless, energy sapping, and not necessary.
Saul met Jesus and nothing else really mattered to him except knowing and pursuing Him who had released him from the past, loved him unconditionally, satisfied him in every way and commissioned him to achieve what had been purposed for his life.
Christian means “Christ in him one”. I want every Christian to live out of resurrection resources - everything else is less than God’s best.
by Joyce Sibthorpe
