Monday, October 11, 2010

A Christian without Christ?

I just finished reading The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me by W. Ian Thomas over the weekend. I had been reading bits and pieces of it for several months.

My first exposure to Ian Thomas was back when I was in Madison, WI in the mid 1970s. I was attending the University of Wisconsin on an on-again-off-again basis; I was also involved in a house church there and one of the brothers had a series of tapes of sermons given by Ian Thomas.

So, on a trip that he and I took to see my sister, Dianne, in Omaha, we passed the time by listening to a number of them. Believe me, driving across Iowa, you need something :) Anyway, I liked what I heard and when this book was offered to me, I took it. By the way, it was a loaner from someone, not a freebie (disclosure necessary for the IRS).

The format of the book is a series of 53 short (2-2.5 page) reflections based on his ministry. Each is complete in itself, although they do build on each other somewhat. I will be posting some excerpts from it over the next week or so.

Their minds [carnal Christians] are still the plaything and the workshop of the devil, for the devil is smart enough and cunning enough that he can always persuade countless numbers of professing Christians to try and be Christians without Christ. They are willing to do anything for Jesus' sake, but they fail to understand that His presence is absolutely imperative to do it, that without Him we are nothing, have nothing, and can do nothing.— The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me, page 14

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