The Daily Word of Righteousness

Making Trees of Life, #9

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. (Revelation 22:1-3—NIV)

Each of us is called to be a tree of life. God will make us a tree of life if we will permit Him to have His unhindered way with us.

So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being" the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. (I Corinthians 15:45—NIV)

If our first personality is that of the living soul, and our second personality is to be that of the life-giving spirit, then we can understand why God deals with us constantly, night and day, requiring that we forsake the spirit of the world, gain victory over the appetites and passions of our flesh, and die to our self-will, our personal ambition.

Only the Lord Jesus Christ is of the eternal, incorruptible Life of God. We of the adamic race were fashioned from the dust of the ground. We do not have the Divine Life without ourselves to give to other people. It is only as we are crucified with Christ and Christ lives and speaks in us that eternal life is brought to other people.

We have made Christianity a religion as we have sought to adapt the words of the New Testament to daily life in the world. But strictly speaking, Christianity is not a religion in the ordinary usage of the term. Christianity is a personal relationship with the living Lord Jesus Christ. When we are deeply involved in church work it is easy to forget this fact.

It is well that we bring to other people the knowledge of the facts concerning Jesus Christ. They can learn these things and choose to believe them.

But the plan of God is that we ourselves, because Christ has been formed in us, become trees of life so that people can "eat" from us, so to speak, and receive into themselves the Life of God that sets us free from the life of flesh and blood.

Because of what it will mean to God, to other people, and to us to become a tree of life, let us lay aside every hindrance as the Holy Spirit brings us through the appropriate experiences of Divine Glory and fiery trials that our inward nature may be filled with eternal life.

If we keep on pressing forward to the attaining of resurrection life in our inward nature, then, at the coming of the Lord, our flesh and bones will be brought forth from the grave and clothed with our body from Heaven, a body of incorruptible eternal life.

This transformation having been accomplished, we now will be ready to descend with the Lord Jesus and install the incorruptible, imperishable Kingdom of God on the earth, serving for eternity as trees of eternal life. (from Making Trees of Life)