By Festus Ndukwe.
The following are five series of how to live and minister in ’Life’ as a Christian minister. Praying it will bless you.
1. *How to be in Life and not in Death*
A Christian enters into a great blessing and fruitfulness in life and ministry when he begins to live and serve in life. Painful that many ministers realize this too late after they had served God for many years. Some do not get to realize this at all until they are dead. It is a great loss.
To live in life you might have disconnected your life from one source, the lower life, your old self and connected to another Source, Christ, the higher life. You might have disconnected from your old life by the cross and connected to your new life by resurrection. Having done this, you now begin to learn to live by your new life as a principle until it becomes your normal way of life. You learn this by practice, by exercise. This necessity dawns on you having come to understand that any work done in your old life is in death and therefore not acceptable by God and will bear no fruit. Except a corn of wheat falls down and dies it abides alone but when it dies it brings forth much fruit, Jn.12:24.
That Christ is my life (Col.3:4) must be received by faith. That this is so does not depend if I feel spiritually high or good, or feel spiritually low or bad. It does not also depend if I have prayed much or prayed little. Why praying deep and long is good is because it provides you the spiritual atmosphere to be in life. Prayer itself is not the life rather it connects you to Christ, the life to flow forth. We abide in Christ both by faith and prayer, and then we bear fruit. If a man is not dead by the cross, even if he prays long he will feel spiritually high for a few days and fall back into death. This is the reason someone may fast for thirty days and quarrel with his wife as soon as he comes back from the mountain. A man that does not know the cross cannot rise higher than his old life even though he prays.
So, when you don’t look for any spiritual feeling and by faith accept Christ as your life you enter into power. That life is a Rock.
2. *How to live in Life and not in Death*
A man who lives by his old life will push things by himself but a man who takes Christ as his life will wait for Christ to push things for him. I discovered that a man will labour in vain to move a boulder until he brings a bull dozer.
I don’t know how far a Christian can go in life if he lives by his old life. But when he trusts Christ as his life Christ becomes for him a bull dozer who bulldozes the way for him.
The greatest power is mobilized by heaven when we exercise faith in Christ in difficult situations. I have seen Christ melt an arrogant and stubborn brother like wax without going into settling issues with him. He ran to us and said he could no longer pray or read the Bible and that we should pray for him as he could not go to heaven if Christ met him in his condition. That is what Christ can do if we allow Him.