If Zoe Is Never Allowed to Triumph

Dear Ray,

What happens if Zoe is never allowed to triumph in us?

I have been sitting with that question. It is easy for me to think about what has happened to Christianity. The buildings, the ministries, the gifted men, the endless teaching. But the question comes back to me. What about the life of God in me? Have I allowed Him to have His way, or have I learned to speak about a life I still resist?

I am seventy-two. I do not want to spend the years I have left explaining something that has never been given its full place in me.

I can write about leaving religion. I can see how the things of Christ replace Christ. Yet I can carry the same thing into my writing. I can want to be understood. I can want someone to recognize that I have seen something. Before I know it, something that began with a turning toward Him has become something I am trying to establish.

And I am back at the center.

That troubles me, Ray. Even our speaking about Zoe can become a substitute for living by Zoe. We can become very clear about the problem and remain untouched by what we are saying.

We learn the language of surrender. We understand that death precedes resurrection. We can explain why the natural life cannot produce anything of God. Then someone dismisses us, and we discover how much of that natural life we are still prepared to defend.

I know that place.

There are times when I want my words to prevail. I want the other person to see. I keep explaining, pushing, trying to bring them around. But somewhere in all that effort, I have ceased to abide. The peace is gone, and I am still talking.

What good is it to win an argument about the life of God if I have left the enjoyment of that life to win it?

I do not mean that the truth has become less important. I mean that I cannot supply its reality. No amount of force in my words can impart what only His life can give.

And this reaches into everything we do together.

If Zoe is not allowed to govern us, something else will. Someone’s ability. Someone’s convictions. Someone’s need to keep things moving. The five-talented brother knows what to do, and soon everyone is living in the space his gift allows them. The quieter members learn to wait. Eventually, they hardly expect to contribute anything at all.

We may call it a functioning church. But where is the room for the life in every member?

I have spoken strongly about the gifted ones needing to die to their gift. I still believe that. But I cannot exempt whatever ability I have. My writing must pass through the same death. I cannot demand that another man relinquish his place while protecting a little place of my own.

The Lord owes me no audience. He owes me no recognition. If He gives me something to write, I can write it and leave it with Him. I do not need to turn it into a reason for my existence.

Christ is already my life.

How easily I forget the sufficiency of that.

I think we imagine Zoe’s triumph as something large enough to be noticed. Yet so much of what He touches in me is hidden from everyone else. The inward insistence that I am right. The resentment when I am overlooked. The impulse to take over. The desire to make something happen because waiting leaves me with nothing to show.

These are the places where I need to yield.

I cannot turn that yielding into another discipline by which I perfect myself. We began by the Spirit. We will not arrive anywhere through the flesh. I can only turn toward the One who is already within me and let Him touch what I have been holding back.

Ray, what if we never do?

What if we spend our whole lives occupied with Christian things and never allow the life we received to become the source of our living?

That seems to me an enormous loss. We were given Christ Himself, and we spent our days producing things for Him out of ourselves.

Paul speaks of work being consumed while the person is saved, yet as through fire. I cannot read that comfortably. There is a difference between belonging to Him and having allowed Him to live through us. There is a difference between what we can accumulate in His name and what has actually come from His life.

I could leave behind books and still have withheld myself.

I do not want to make that sentence about anyone else.

I have wanted to write these books. I still do. But finishing them cannot become more important than the One I am writing about. If I lose the inward turning toward Him in the effort to finish, what have I accomplished? More words telling someone else where to find a spring I have stopped drinking from.

I need to remain at the source.

I do not believe God’s purpose will finally be defeated. But I can spend my years resisting my own participation in it. His faithfulness does not make my withholding harmless. A lifetime can pass while I ask Him to bless what I will not surrender.

And yet He is here.

That is what brings me back. I do not have to travel somewhere to find Him. I do not have to resolve every contradiction in myself before turning. I can come with the resistance, the ambition, the hurt, the whole unfinished condition of my being.

Lord, here it is. This is what I keep protecting. I cannot make it spiritual. Have Your way in me.

Perhaps that is all I can honestly say today.

I hope we can help one another remain there, Ray. Close to Him. Willing to be interrupted. Willing to let something go without finding another thing to put in its place. Content, increasingly, that Christ Himself is what we have been given.

I have said much about what must be left behind.

I want the life within me to have the final word.

With love,
Brent