Day 70: Living Daily in Reality: The Exchanged Life
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So the world is exactly like it was not meant to be, and our Maker has
permitted this so that we would have a clear choice. This meant the
capacity to love because we had the freedom not to love.Â

The reason his only son appeared as the human Jesus in the first century
was so that we would see clearly that the world we have created is
something that brings great pain to him. It is evident that either it
has to change or we have to change.

This is why our maker designed you different from all the rest of us –
so that his son could complete the world through you as you lived
inside-out, but we all have lived outside-in – that is – as practical
atheists who have no maker and need to get security and significance and
happiness from the world. We can never get enough of this from people
and things and experiences to satisfy our need for the love of our maker,
so our very nature has become perverted and needs to be remade. This is
the meaning of that old Biblical clause “the wages of sin is deathâ€(cid:157)
– sin is living as if there’s no God – and practical atheism so
perverts human nature that it requires radical destruction and
re-creation by God’s power so that it can operate the way it was
originally intended.

Our maker has done all this in what our physicists call a parallel
universe – or eternity – above time and space as we know them, so we
now can experience our creator’s son living in us and through us —
beginning to fill the world instead of emptying it for ourselves,
subduing it instead of being subdued by it and using it rather than
abusing it.

This is called the “exchanged lifeâ€(cid:157) – described by Paul in the
Bible when he said, “this life I live – yet not I – but Christ
lives within meâ€(cid:157). It is “Christ in you – the hope of gloryâ€(cid:157) –
you as a permanent resident of the eternal life for which we were made,
no longer living in fear that you won’t get what you need, but
preoccupied with what your creator’s son wants to do or say through
you. You know that you were made part of him and that you share the
benefits of his ability to use the sub-atomic particles to modify even
matter to develop the world in ways that accord with the Creator’s
will. From time to time these seemingly supernatural powers will be
manifested in the interim years before eventually the whole world will
have to experience the renewal that already exists in a parallel universe.

But such powers of Christ’s uncreated life can only be manifested where
we have exchanged our life for His. This requires the projection of
ourselves outside ourselves – a total acceptance that we were destroyed
with him in His death – and that his will alone counts in our everyday

life. It means “not I, but Christâ€(cid:157) – only then can his Spirit
live through us the life for which we were made.

This means that we no longer live from the outside-in, as in this little
diagram, but we live from the inside-out – from the heart and thoughts
of our creator’s son within us – expressing his thoughts and his
heart and what he wants.  It means stopping our looking to the things
and circumstances and people around us for our security and happiness and
sense of significance – but instead trusting our Father’s
faithfulness, enjoying the gifts he has provided all around us and
pleasing him and wanting his favor above man’s.

This changes the way our minds work: they concentrate on understanding
how our maker’s plans will work out and affect the world, our emotions
will enjoy his company and using the powers he has given us, while our
wills direct firmly our life’s actions and feelings. All of this is
motivated by a real oneness we sense with our God – and a preoccupation
with what He is thinking and wants. We enjoy walking through the world
with the owner beside us as he explains what his ideas and plans are.Â
Let’s do just that during these next thirty segments – let’s look at some
of the ways our Maker might guide us in the challenges and problems that
our world faces.