Day 60: Living Daily in Reality: The Exchanged Life
===================================================

To sum up then our conversations about living daily in reality, what is
reality?  Reality is that you are actually part of our Creator’s
only son – the man known as Jesus of Nazareth who lived on the earth
for more than thirty years in the first century of this present era. Â
One of his followers has written “you are the body of Christ and
individually limbs of itâ€(cid:157) and he himself said to his father, our
Creator, “I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly
oneâ€(cid:157).

Sin is not just some moral failure like stealing or adultery – sin is
“missing the markâ€(cid:157) – missing the whole point of life – living as
if there’s no God – as if you are not part of his only son! Â
Living in this unreality is trying to get the sense of significance and
security and happiness from people and things and circumstances instead
of your dear Father who knows you personally as part of his only Son. Â
When you do this, your whole personality becomes warped and corrupt so
that you can’t do what you want: you try to feel how important you are
to your Maker, but all the celebrity the world can give you isn’t
enough.  You try to feel safe and secure, but you can never get enough
money or possessions – and circumstances never give you the happiness
that only reality provides!

 So your life works outside in rather than inside out.  This inbred
sin or dependence on the world has made it impossible for your maker’s
son to live the unique life in you that he has planned, so you’re left
with the unsatisfactory existence you have – you don’t believe
there’s anyone inside you except your own thoughts, so you have no idea
what your Maker’s son wants to do through you, so you use your mind to
manipulate things and people and circumstances for your own security,
significance and happiness. This results in hundreds of short-circuits
that develop between your eyes (looking for peer approval) and your mind
and between your feelings (looking for peace and exhilaration) and your
circumstances.  When you try to fix these internal malfunctions
through self-help and the power of positive thinking you find you can’t
– your whole human-nature has become carnal nature that will not do
what it was made to do. It was made to express the part of God’s Son
that only you can express – so only God can put it right.

That’s what our creator expressed in Jesus Christ’s historical
crucifixion in 29 A.D. and it’s what he did in eternity before the
world was made – when he foresaw that we could have the free will to
love him only if we had the opportunity to do the opposite.  He knew
he would have to bear that, and he did – and has – every day of our
lives – and will – until we stop killing him inside ourselves! Â
He has replaced your old self – that outside-in nature in his only Son
– and replaced it with a new creation – an inside-out nature. Only

his Son’s spirit in you can realize this reorientation of your whole
personality – only his spirit can reveal to you the next psychological
or spiritual short-circuit that he has replaced in you within
Himself.  Only our maker knows exactly how each of us is missing the
life he has for us.

Only he can sort us out – and that’s the secret to your life here –
to let our maker’s Son within you remake your very nature so that your
life can be fulfilled in him. Your nature is broken – let Christ
replace it with his so that your life becomes an expression of His.Â
Let’s look at the sense this exchanged life can make of the problems
and difficulties we face each day.

HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING?
Â
My life flows on in endless song
Above earth’s lamentation;
I hear the real though distant hymn
That hails a new creation

No storm can shake my calm repose
While to this rock I’m clinging:
If Christ is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?

What though my joys and comforts die!
I know my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness round me lie!
Songs in the night he giveth

I lift my eyes – the cloud grows thin,
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it.

The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart
A fountain ever springing
All things are mine since I am His
How can I keep from singing?