Lifetime Guarantee (2 page)

It’s no easier for an ordinary person to live the Christian life today than it ever was. That’s the reason you’re equipped differently from the average, run-of-the-mill individual. Christ now
indwells you,
Christian, to enable you to cooperate with Him to express
His
life through you moment by moment, not just when you encounter the situations you can’t handle by yourself. That’s the mistake I made. I tried to handle all the “small stuff” by myself and not trouble Him with it. The straw kept piling up on my back day by day until it inundated me. It took me so long to wake up and smell the coffee! But I think I’m not much different from most people. We’re all slow to learn.

What are your symptoms? Troubles in your marriage? You just can’t hack it anymore? You’re just worn out from trying? You’ve given and given until you feel as if you just can’t give anything else? You’re considering bailing out?

Maybe you just can’t handle the problems on the job. You’re trying to keep all the balls in the air, but you don’t have enough hands or time, and they’re falling all around your head and shoulders. Your boss doesn’t seem to be sympathetic, either. Further, you can’t quit because you couldn’t get a better job. And once you found out that
Maranatha
means “Come quickly, Lord,” you’ve been closing your prayers with it ever since.

Perhaps you go off to the convention and you wind up in the massage parlor or renting a porno movie in your hotel room—or something worse. You’ve promised God you’ll never do it again, but you have. You’ve rededicated until your rededicator’s worn out, and nothing helps. And you’re a teacher or a deacon—or a pastor.

Maybe your attitude about yourself is, “If I could just become a different person. Someone I could learn to like and respect. But [sigh] what’s the use? It’s all so hopeless! I’ve tried the self-improvement books and tapes. They just don’t work for me. I’m just different. I’d be better off dead. Everyone would be better off if I were gone. I can’t stand myself!” And maybe you’ve even toyed with the notion of ending it all.

Dear one, it is no accident that you’ve picked up this book. This is your time! Our precious Lord wants to offer some beautiful, healing words to you from these pages. All that garbage listed above is one deep pile of (you guessed it)
symptoms.
Your problem is twofold:
Number 1,
you are trying to live the Christian life instead of understanding how to collaborate with Christ to live the Christian life
for
you and
through
you.
Number 2,
you are not comprehending how to appropriate your true identity as the new creation you already are
in
Christ. You are still attempting to face each day using your old ID pass.

I hear you say, “But I don’t understand that.” I didn’t, either, when I was in my fix. But, I’m free from my fix now. He took me through it, and I’m here to tell you it was a big one. God spells relief
J-e-s-u-s.
Wouldn’t you know that appropriating some facet of Christ is somehow the root of the solution for every problem that any person can experience? The key to experiencing victory in Christ lies in learning how to literally “walk in newness of life” as described in the Word.

God has graciously shown me how to appropriate the life that is hidden with Christ and to explain it in very simple, biblical terms. I guess my strong suit is simple communication through practical life experiences, the nuts and bolts kind, to teach you how to see Christ glorify Himself through
you
.

Let me draw you a verbal road map to acquaint you with this book. It is designed to teach you
how
to appropriate consistent, rather than just sporadic, victory in Christ.

In Chapter 1, we’ll look at how you have programmed your brain with earthly techniques for satisfying your needs for love and self-esteem—the greatest needs in life—rather than seeking these through Christ. These
techniques
are called “flesh” by God (see Philippians 3:3-6).

In Chapter 2, we’ll see that the measure of success or failure you attain in satisfying your needs through earthly techniques determines your unique version of the flesh. Those who are successful cling to these; those who are not feel hopelessly unlovely.
Both
are flesh. In Chapter 3, I describe my own struggle for love and self-esteem to help you identify your flesh.

In Chapters 4 and 5, we’ll deal with the fact that you were born a self-centered rebel, dead to God, but alive to Satan and the world. Your major goal was to get all your needs supplied
your
way. God had no plan to make something beautiful of
your
self-centered life, but to crucify it in Christ and spawn a
new
creature in Him who is now totally acceptable
to
Him.

In Chapter 6, we’ll examine how Satan tries to deceive you. His goal is to trick you into using your flesh to get your God-given needs satisfied. He accomplishes this goal through your thought life, masquerading as the now defunct “old man.”

In Chapter 7, we’ll emphasize the reality of who you are as a Christian. When you were born, your parents didn’t say, “Oh, I hope he matures into a human being.”
Birth
determined your identity. You
are
human. Likewise, when God caused you to be born brand-new in Christ, He didn’t say, “Oh, I hope he turns out to be a new creature in Christ.” Your
second
birth determines your
present
spiritual identity.

In Chapter 8, we’ll consider the role of feelings. Feelings are wonderful when they line up with
God’s
reality. The problem is that they also react to earthly circumstances. This is when you are most highly motivated to “walk after the flesh” rather than to walk in the finished work of Christ
for
you
in
the circumstance.

In Chapter 9, we’ll see how Christ living through you is supposed to be the typical Christian experience. Many believers are deceived into thinking that trusting Christ as your life is an idealistic fantasy for them, something attained only by the spiritual elite. Quite the contrary is true. Such a life isn’t only attainable; it is God’s provision for
every
Christian.

In Chapter 10, we’ll examine Bible verses that seem to refute this teaching. The Bible can be interpreted as teaching that salvation, security, and sanctification must be earned. But it can also be interpreted that these are
bestowed
upon the believer solely by grace through faith in the finished work of Christ. The correct interpretation is critical to your victory over the flesh. This chapter reveals what I believe is the key to “rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15).

In Chapter 11, we’ll discuss the need for “brokenness.” Most of us have only a hazy understanding of what we’re to be broken
from.
We must be broken from trusting in our fleshly ways. Often they have been so productive that God must allow suffering to come into our lives that our flesh can’t handle.

Finally, in Chapter 12, we’ll see that God’s ultimate goal is to conform you to Christ’s image, and we’ll review how He does that. Snuffing Satan out will be easy for God when the time comes. But right now, God is using him by allowing him to attack your flesh. God’s goal is that you be motivated to abandon your fleshly ways and turn to Him, learning to enjoy His lifetime guarantee.

I’m not a trained theologian, although that would be nice. I’m just pretty much a plain vanilla guy who mows the lawn, marvels at how airplanes fly, feels he’s gathering precious treasure when his pecan tree bears in the fall, watches football games, adores his wife and kids, and loves Jesus with all his heart.

God has freed me from a life of hostility and criticism toward my wife and sons; from lusting after anything in a skirt; from demanding that my sons be macho; from being torn by passions within, doubting my self-worth and at times my salvation, and yet simultaneously working like crazy trying to live a life of victory in Christ. After twelve years of struggling, I finally crashed and burned.

That was the best thing the Lord could have ever let happen to me. It was through my painful failure after giving the Christian life my best shot that God began to teach me the liberating truths recorded in this book. I know of no other book quite like it. If I did, I wouldn’t have undertaken this project. I do not intend to toot my own whistle or claim to have the market cornered on truth. God has dealt with that. “I will not presume to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished
through me
” (Romans 15:18, emphasis added). This book and the freedom I now enjoy through the truths it contains, I respectfully dedicate to my hero, Jesus.

I am also indebted to my son and partner in the ministry, Pres, for his technical expertise and wisdom in writing this book. He has also developed study questions following each chapter. If you want the contents of this book to become more than simply information, I urge you to work through these study helps as an aid to personal appropriation.

I love you.

Bill Gillham

The following suicide note came to me in January 1986:

What would you say to this young woman? Would you say she needs professional help? Some years ago that’s what I would have said—before I began to comprehend the truths set forth in this book.

Exactly one year later, I met this dear lady at a seminar my wife Anabel and I were leading in Washington, D.C. The woman is now a happy, productive, relaxed Christian who praises Christ daily. In the postscript of a more recent letter from her, she said, “Just today I brought a woman into my home the doctors feel should enter the psych ward. Who would have thought a year ago when I was planning my death that God would be using me to help someone who is so desperate?” And she signed off with a smiley face.

The truths contained in this book are precious, fine gold. I can say that without feeling I’m bragging because they aren’t mine. I have merely been entrusted with them to pass them on to others. For you to understand them, we must proceed step by step, the first of which is to give you an extensive understanding of what the Bible means when it speaks of “flesh” or “walking after the flesh” (e.g., Romans 8:4). The suicidal woman’s lack of understanding of this concept almost destroyed her.

In these first two chapters, then, I’ll show how you have programmed your brain with earthly techniques for satisfying your needs for love and self-esteem—again, the greatest needs in life—
or
for believing yourself to be unworthy of either and thus living your life to keep love away because it makes you uncomfortable. Both of these techniques are do-it-yourself projects that God calls “flesh.” I’ll document this later from Philippians 3:3-9.

The term “flesh” has many meanings in the Bible, but our primary definition here is this:
Flesh refers to the old ways or patterns by which you have attempted to get all your needs supplied instead of seeking Christ first and trusting Him to meet your needs.
These patterns develop as you are growing up in your parents’ home. And when the Holy Spirit begins the work of tearing them down, most Christians panic at the idea of losing them.

We can lump all Christians into three broad flesh categories: Yukky Flesh, Plain Vanilla Flesh, and USDA Choice Flesh. The person with the Yukky Flesh has been reared in an environment where, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get his love supply out of it by his do-it-yourself tactics. The suicidal woman at the beginning of this chapter has Yukky Flesh. She was nearly deceived into suicide to escape her feelings of low self-esteem. The Plain Vanilla, or average, Flesh person has been moderately successful, neither a roaring success nor a total failure at getting his need for self-esteem met. The USDA Choice Flesh person is everyone’s candidate for Mr. Christian. His high self-esteem is a result of his skill at milking love out of the world.