When Jesus saved me, I began a journey with Him that I am confident He will complete – either in this life or the next. I was a broken and shattered vessel before Jesus found me – useless and ugly. Now, I am a new creation – a vessel of honor in the Lord’s hands – willing to be broken for Him as He sees fit. Christ was broken and spilled out for me. His heart was broken by my sin…but His love was poured out on my soul.
In my gratitude and out of the freedom and joy God had brought into my once hopeless life, I felt a great need and urgency to tell others that Jesus could love them right where they were, regardless of their particular sin, and set them free just as He had done for me. I honestly felt like - and thought like - a brand new man…a new creation in Christ.
Using the gifts God had given me, I began to ask the Lord for ways to show people what He had done in my heart and began to understand that the best way to accomplish that was to allow Jesus Christ to live His life through me and my life!
"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the [life] which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20 NASB
The question became, “How do I allow Jesus Christ to live His life through me?” The answer was as simple and practical as it could be. My identity became that of a vessel in which Jesus could fill with His love and then use that same vessel to pour out that love to others. I began to recognize that I was no one’s Savior and no one’s Redeemer…but that I was a conduit of the One Who is Savior and Redeemer.
I determined to do my part and recognized that I was but one small stone in the temple of the entire body of Christ…and that I needed to do my part as a stone in the structure of that temple. My being was purchased by the blood of Christ. I was not longer to live for myself and for my own pleasure. I was to live for Jesus and to point others to Him and His amazing life-changing love.
Practically, I began to see even my human body in spiritual terms. My hands were now the hands of Jesus and I used them to give others a helping hand out of the painful depths of the miry clay bondage to sin tends to be. The DNA of my heavenly Father includes healing. My life became a conduit of His healing touch.
My eyes began to see from a different point of view. Rather than judging people for their behavior, I began to see them as lost and wounded and confused and broken children of God in need of someone to love them right where they were…but love them enough to not leave them there. My eyes became conduits of the light of God’s love and seeing others from His point of view gave me great grace to reach out to those society deemed weird or beyond hope or too messy to get involved with. Jesus spent time with the messiness of people’s lives by building relationships with them. Reality is that people need to know and to be known. They need to be seen…to be valued. I could do that.
Like Jesus, one of my guiding principles of my faith was to be about my Father’s business. His business? Rescuing the lost. My desire was to be a vessel of His desire to minister to the needs of people. To know my Father’s business and to practice that business was as simple as knowing Father’s heart. He pursued me and poured out love on me in spite of my failure and in spite of the lies I had believed. I began to see just how big and capable and loving and forgiving God’s heart is…and my heart grew in capacity the more I poured it out in meeting the needs of others. For me, the best way to do that was through the telling of my story.
The best part of all? The release of the stress and anxiety of feeling I had to rescue everyone I came in contact with. In the simplest of terms, I became less that Jesus might become more. I stepped out of the way by putting on the heart and attitude of a servant and simply pointed the way to Jesus and let Jesus worry about how people responded. The greatest satisfaction of my life became evident whenever someone saw past me and saw Jesus living His life out loud through me and my life. I wrote the following song as a prayer to Father God to help me do just that…and to remind me of who and Whose I am…and how to go about my Father’s business.
Jesus, Live Through Me
WORDS & MUSIC
Dennis Jernigan
February 5, 1990
I am but a vessel
In Your temple one living stone
My life is no longer mine
I am not my own
Rushing Wind, blow through me
Through my life help others to see
No more is it I who live
But Christ who lives in me
Live through me
And I will be Your hands
Let Your healing flow through me
And I will be Your eyes
And a light to help men see
And I will be Your heart
And I will be Your feet
And when the prodigal comes running home
I won’t be the one he sees
Jesus, live through me.
1 Therefore, rid [yourselves] of all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, 2 and like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, 3 if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. 4 And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by people, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, 5 you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 2:1-5 NASB
Let’s do this today…let’s see ourselves as living stones being built up as a spiritual house - a dwelling place of the Spirit of God - and then let’s offer ourselves up to be vessels that pour out the love of Christ on those around us.
Dennis Jernigan
To hear The Dennis Jernigan Podcast version of this teaching and to hear the song, go to http://podcast.dennisjernigan.com/e/jesus-live-through-me/
Photo courtesy of https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/07/18/14/59/man-164217_1280.jpg