Living as Never Seen Death!
Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:55-57
God ‘s purpose for me as his disciple is that I should never see death. Enoch is a great example of a life lived so dependently on God that not even death could touch him. “By faith, Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death.” (Hebrews 11:5). There’s no “dying grace” with Enoch for dying grace is God ‘s final act of charity toward a believer who needs a little extra help in his transition from earth to heaven. I must live so that no dying grace will ever be necessary.
Victory over death does not occur when death lays its hand upon me. It occurs in the continuous stream of life, where death continually shadows me and seeks to frighten me, even though it cannot claim me. I must live as Enoch did, by faith, which continually holds down death. By the time I reach my actual transition, death should be a slain giant dangling at my side. My immortality must be an immediate and continual experience. I must not die and go to heaven, but live and go to heaven. In fact, I must not go to heaven at all, but bring heaven down to earth so that my transition will simply be the continuation of an already heavenly walk.
I must get beyond the point where faith “saves my soul”. Thank God, it does that, but it’s indefinitely more; it creates a way of life in which heaven has already come as not just a distant hope. Some Christians say, “oh if we’re only in heaven”, I can be in heaven, here, and now, by faith. By living, according to God ‘s rules, by letting God visit me personally, by thinking heavenly thoughts, I can be in enwrapped by heaven now; then when the transition comes, it will be just the further opening of everlasting glory!
Remember the way you BELIEVE is the way you will SPEAK. And the way you speak is the way you will LIVE.