Gary,

As usual, you've written another great letter to the Doves.  I just heard this brief message from Dr. Charles Stanley:  https://www.intouch.org/listen/featured/christ-our-life-part-2  It answers a lot of what we all need to hear - Our life is in Christ Jesus.  I was saved when I was 10 years old in an Assembly of God church during a revival.  Afterwards, I was not properly discipled and over the years I got into a backslidden condition in my Christian life.  After repenting and coming back to Christ, I thought all I needed to do was to live the Christian life on my own.  I found this to be something I could never do in my own strength.  It even lead me to thinking I needed to add to what Jesus did on the cross - that I needed to earn my salvation.  Thus nullifying the finished work Jesus did on the cross.  After many, many failures at this attempt, I found over the years that the Christian life is impossible to live on my own. One day I felt saved but the next day I didn't.  It was like trying to keep the Law and I failed miserably.

Over the years I realized I could not live the Christian life on my own and that God never really intended me to this apart from Jesus.  This realization came to me slowly over the years.  Like the song says "I hear the Savior say, 'thy strength indeed is small, child of weakness, watch and pray, find in Me thine all in all'... Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow....."   It took me years and years to come to this realization even though I must have heard this message somewhere along the way.  Dr. Stanley drives this point home in his message - Jesus is our life.  The church desperately needs to hear his message.

Dr. Stanley refers to Ephesians 2:10 which says "For we are His Workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." It reminds me of another verse in the song "....Lord now indeed I find, Thy power and Thine alone, can change the leper's spots and melt a heart of stone."  It is God's power working through and in us that enables us to accomplish these good works that were fore ordained, by God Himself, that we should walk in them.  What an awesome and mighty privilege He has given us!  This is what the apostle Paul meant when he said in Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."  Oh, how marvelous, how wonderful is my Savior's love for me!  If you haven't listened to Dr. Stanley's message, you owe it to yourself to listen.  It takes less than 20 minutes.