If I fail to reaffirm my helplessness daily, then yesterdays victory will lead me to todays defeat.

The pattern of our relationship with God was set in the Garden of Eden before the fall of man. God would daily visit and talk to Adam. We were created to have that kind of close fellowship with Him. Nothing in life can substitute for it in the Christian life. You can no more have a vibrant spiritual life absent of a relationship with God than you can have a vibrant physical life absent of oxygen.

Relationship is us getting to know God. Knowing someone is far different from simply knowing about them. I have a friend who knows just about everything he could ever learn about D.L. Moody. But no matter how much he knows about Moody, he will never know D. L. Moody. Obviously, it is because Moody is dead and gone to glory.

However, Jesus is very much alive and He longs to be a very real and present Presence in your life. Yes, indeed, without a dynamic love relationship with Him, we will find the Christian life to be a series of ups and downs, periods of self-induced victory punctuated with bouts of self-indulged defeat. If we dont walk in intimacy with the Spirit, we will eventually walk, once again, in the immaturity of the flesh.

The Hid-N-Life is a term at RU that we use to define this intimacy in Christ. Simply put, when it comes to true Christian living, it is not about information; it is about a personal relation. That intimacy only comes as we experience Gods work of sanctification in our lives.

Have you struggled to experience that dynamic personal relation? Well, thanks to the prince of this world and his delegators (powers and authorities), the information needed to develop that personal relation often remains hidden! Just like the devil hides justification from the unbeliever, he hides the benefits of sanctification from the believer.

The Hid-N-Life is best described as exercising a measure of confidence (thats faith) in Gods ability to do the work (thats grace) necessary in my life to conform me to the image of His Son (thats fruit) through a daily walk with Him. I will not do the work (thats performing); I will allow the work to be done in me (thats transforming). I must realize that God did not come to change my life (thats self righteousness). He came to exchange it (thats righteousness)!

As a result, I will die daily through confession and repentance of all sin that is obvious to me or brought to my conscience by the Holy Spirit during my daily time with God and throughout the day. As I do this, I will experience a greater enlightenment in my worship. My enlivened worship will then provide me with the most coveted act of the Spirit, and that is His intuition. With Holy Spirit intuition, I will remain the clean vessel required to qualify for Gods power on my walk and work.

As we walk in His Spirit, and enjoy the enlightenment of real worship, we will begin to see great victories in our lives! However, often in the life of a Christian, we experience great victories, and then we fail to remember Who did the work! We take the compliments, the exhortations, the gloryand begin to let them make us look good, rather than making Him look good! Our relationship with Him takes backstage as we begin, once again, to perform in our own power. God may allow us center stage, but only for a short act. The curtain will come down and this will lead to the inevitable.defeat.

The only way to conquer this actor from taking stage is to consistently acknowledge our helplessness. We must realize that we are NOTHING outside of Christ. It is only by remaining IN CHRIST that we will experience continual victory.

Realize our need and think not we are eliteor surely our victory will cause us to retreat in defeat!