Dwight Fletcher | End-time believers

Wars, rumours of wars, climate change, increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, social and economic crises, health epidemics, the list seems almost endless. If we are not yet in the last days, our current time will at least qualify as a dress rehearsal. Thankfully, in the last days it’s not our ability that will take us through, it’s our reliance on the Holy Spirit. He knows how to keep us in that place of readiness, awareness, alertness, watchfulness and preparedness. We can all get weary, and things may happen to, and around us that will cause pain and distraction, but the Holy Spirit will keep us.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 (NIV), will take on new meaning.

For us to excel during the end-times, it says it all. The Apostle Paul was telling Christians that living out their salvation could not be done by self-will or by the law, but only by a reliance on what Jesus has already done and His continued presence in their lives. Paul was saying that their human ability was insufficient for the Christian walk. This is nowhere more true than in the last days. The discernment we will need and the capacity to withstand anything that will come at us is a Holy Spirit thing. To make it, will require a surrender to the person and work of Jesus in our lives. Just as with the Galatians, living as a modern Christian requires deliberate and intentional reliance on the power of what Jesus has already done, and what He is doing in our lives daily.

As born-again baptised Believers, we are united with Christ at a fundamental level. When we accepted Him, we were united with Him in His death. The law and sin only have power over us when we are alive.Through Christ, we’re dead to the law and sin. We died to sin, the world, as well as all selfish and corrupt desires.What the Bible refers to as the ‘old man’, our sinful nature, is dead and we have been freed from its consequences and its rulership. We’re therefore dead to the tendencies, deficiencies, and control of the evil one.

FREE TO LIVE RIGHT

We‘re not only united with Jesus in His death,we are also united with Him in His resurrection. We are now new and free to live right under the rulership of Christ. So the Apostle wrote,“I no longer live, but Christ lives in me”. Jesus is alive in every Christian through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Christians are Jesus aided people. Jesus has already overcome the world so we will overcome it because of Him. Christ, through the Holy Spirit is living through us, and we are free from those things that would make us vulnerable to Satan’s power.Born-again believers are alive in Christ, and resurrection power is alive in them. Overcoming and devil defeating power is resident there, and they can stand victorious. Access to all this power and anointing, however, is dependent on the extent to which we are obedient to God. In the last days we will face many things, but with Christ in the vessel we can ride out the storm. Regardless of what we face, we will be able to overcome because Christ is in us by the Holy Spirit, and we will remain united with Him through our faith and obedience.