cocoon

Christ is the head and we are His body.
We the church ... are His body.
His hands, His feet.
We suffer like He does, but we are glorified with Him.
He died for our sin - we are dead to our sin.
He was buried... His life ended so that a new one could be born - we are buried - our old life gone - a new one to be born.
He rose again - we are raised to new life - alive IN Jesus - new.

If my life is IN Jesus - why does so much of my life feel like it is outside of His life?
If my life is all new - why does it feel old and tired?
I must be doing something wrong?

The last 6 months I have been buried in the dirt ... dirt filling my heart, mind and ears ... I couldn't sense the Lord's presence at all. Is that how Jesus felt on the cross, and in the ground? How is it possible for God do that to a part of himself? How does it feel to be Jesus - abandoned to death? One who is so intimately intertwined in the Godhead to then be disconnected - ripped away and put in the ground?


It's a cocoon. The ground is a cocoon for Jesus - and a cocoon for us. The place where death and new life intersect.


Andrew Murray - The Master's Indwelling ... "The sentence of death is on everything that is of nature. But are we willing to accept it, do we cherish it? and are we not rather trying to escape the sentence or to forget it? We do not believe fully that the sentence of death is on us. Whatever is of nature must die. Ask God to make you willing to believe with your heart that to die with Christ is the only way to live in Him. You ask, “But must it then be dying every day?” Yes, beloved; Jesus lived every day in the prospect of the cross, and we, in the power of His victorious life, being made conformable to His death, must rejoice every day in going down with Him into death.
Take an illustration. Take an oak of some hundred years’ growth. How was that oak born? In a grave. The acorn was planted in the ground, a grave was made for it that the acorn might die. It died and disappeared; it cast roots downward, and it cast shoots upward, and now that tree has been standing a hundred years. Where is it standing? In its grave; all the time in the very grave where the acorn died; it has stood there stretching its roots deeper and deeper into that earth in which its grave was made, and yet, all the time, though it stood in the very grave where it had died, it has been growing higher, and stronger, and broader, and more beautiful. And all the fruit it ever bore, and all the foliage that adorned it year by year, it owed to that grave in which its roots are cast and kept. Even so Christ owes everything to His death and His grave. And we, too, owe everything to that grave of Jesus. Oh! let us live every day rooted in the death of Jesus. Be not afraid, but say: “To my own will I will die; to human wisdom, and human strength, and to the world I will die; for it is in the grave of my Lord that His life has its beginning, and its strength and its glory.”"

I know I have quoted this above from Andrew Murray before. To me it is so so so very powerful. That visual of the acorn's death that a mighty oak might be born and grown in that very grave. In fact that is the very purpose of the acorn ... it was never meant to stay as it was, but be transformed into something greater. So then why do we try so very hard to hold onto our acorn life - when the transformation of the grave is available to us?

Simple fear. The grave hurts. Death is scary. Fear of not knowing, fear of pain, fear of being buried, not being 'us' any longer. Even Jesus was afraid ... afraid of the pain ahead - the separation from the Father. Fear is natural ... but our faith has to be big enough - like Jesus' - to say NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS BE DONE.

I can't say I am enjoying this time in the cocoon. The grave is ugly and far too quiet - too still - too empty. But it's not those things that I am seeking to get to - I am seeking the transformation - the Resurrection!!! So the cocoon IS necessary.

Jesus when He was born into the next life was even more glorious than the first because His mission was accomplished! He rescued us - His beloved church, His beloved body, His creation. He is now sitting at the right hand of the Father in glorious beauty, able to intercede for His people - sending out the Spirit to empower and make His bride more beautiful.

I get that I am on a journey - that will only be completed in Heaven. I will never be finished here on planet Earth ... I am just getting closer and closer each day to when time and eternity meet and I can be totally free. That day will happen when I am truly in the grave, and free of all the crap in my life. But until that happens - I want my life here to be spent well, filled with as much of Christ as I can possibly get. Whether it be glorious or full of the grave.

Romans 8:17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

More Murray - "Some one says: “I do indeed desire to live the life of perfect trust; I desire to let Christ live it in me; I am longing to come to such an apprehension of Christ as shall give me the certainty that Christ will forever abide in me; I want to come to the full assurance that Christ, my Joshua, will keep me in the land of victory.” What is needful for that? My answer is: “Take care that you do not take a false Christ, an imaginary Christ, a half Christ.” And what is the full Christ? The full Christ is the man who said, “I give up everything to the death that God may be glorified. I have not a thought; I have not a wish; I would not live a moment except for the glory of God.”

.... All of Jesus - the true Jesus - is the suffering AND the glorious victory.

Even more Murray, "And the one thought that ought to be in the heart of every believer is this: “I am in the death with Christ; absolutely, unchangeably given up to wait upon God, that God may work out His purpose and glory in me from moment to moment.” Few attain the victory and the enjoyment and the full experience at once...Death is a solemn thing, an awful thing. In the Garden it cost Christ great agony to die that death; and no wonder it is not easy to us. But we willingly consent when we have learned the secret; in death alone the life of God will come; in death there is blessedness unspeakable."


So now how do I begin to answer the question ... if I am IN Christ - why does so much of my life feel outside of His life? And, if He has given me a new life - than why does mine feel so old and tired?

I don't really think I have given myself over to death ... I am fighting the cocoon... I haven't surrendered to the dirt. I feel old and tired and outside because giving up so much feels too hard. But this death - my death - is not too much to give - if LIFE is what I get in return.

Submit flesh - let go - just die. I want life.