A Zombie Seen in The Great Exchange

I had a wonderful friend contact me through Facebook with a funny story. I want to share it with you. This is what she wrote: “I have a funny story about your Exchange Life book. I left it laying out. My 3 year old granddaughter was talking about this man with only one eye this morning while I was making breakfast. Wasn’t sure what she was talking about. She pulled me into the den and showed me your book.  Both my grandchildren thought I was reading a monster book on Zombies. I explained it was a painting of yourself and the light was reflecting off your face hiding your other eye. She totally got it.

My 5 year old grandson was disappointed when I explained it was about Jesus and not zombies.

I wrote in response: Tell him in actuality I do talk about Zombies in that book. On page 27 I talk about the monster within. Originally when I wrote it I talk about it as a Zombie Apocalypse. Do you remember? Maybe you can share with him the lesson in the book, catered for a 5 year old boy. Why not, I wrote it as a child.

So today I wanted to share that section of The Great Exchange with you now. It may be more applicable to our current times than we knew.

The Monster Within

As individual members of the Body of Christ, we are to be dead to our old nature and alive in His New. This IS the Body of Christ. The problem is that we actually can live a life separate from Jesus as Source. But living apart from Christ’s Life makes us dismembered parts of the Body. By functioning on our own, separated from the Head, we are performing either in the dead-self severed from His Body – or worse, claiming to be united while functioning independently and quite apart from Christ our Head.

We, in our new nature, display the living Christ to a dying world – not by law and doctrine…but in grace, Spirit, and Truth.

The true Body of Christ is those who have left their will in the grave and now function by the Will of Another. Our movements and choices are dictated by Another’s mind. His Life is now the Source of our life. This is not a doctrinal reaching but a living reality. Outside of His Life, we will only evidence our old dead self, the one from whom we were saved.

Monstrous Reality

The nature of fallen humanity is to consume – to devour in a chewing, munching, eating frenzy. Self is always FOR self with the goal of saving self. Each and every action feeds the existence of self. All is expendable for the will of self ’s existence. All is subject to the gorging. “What’s yours is mine and I will only share what is mine in order to get more of yours!”

Any time you or I do not yield to Christ the Head, regardless of how noble our deeds appear, we function in madness. By nature, we cannot do otherwise. Death seeks life in order to consume it!

Only truly born-again believers have a nature counter to this horrific mode of being. Their existence springs from the fullness of Another.

By grace, I have the very life of the Son of God. And only when I have that precious Life brought forth from my body as my only life, will I have any real life at all.

Zombie Apocalypse

Think of the horror of the living dead. Monstrous visual, the things of nightmares. But you know, this terror is perpetrated in real life. What is more, it is in the church. It is Christians letting their old nature live while calling it Christ! This is the most frightening horror because the result is actual death and hell.

Jesus solved this terrifying dilemma by CHRIST’S LIFE dwelling in us as our only reality: His mind as my mind, my will surrendered to His will, His LIFE as my life.

Christ’s Life is not acquired as a possession to hold, because He is the One holding us. This Life is obtained through receiving Him by faith.

Jesus knows our voracious nature; He created it. But only as He lives through us will we find safety and the hope of satisfaction. When we consent to His indwelling, we receive and experience the Life of the Creator lived through us. It is amazing to observe His Life in my own body, seeing firsthand all that He will do through a life that is simply open to receiving Him.

“My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Galatians 2:20 NLT