Seeing Christ

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If you're a true believer in Jesus Christ, and thus saved, you are born from above. It says "born again"
in many versions of the Bible, but the most accurate way of saying it is really born from above. You could say "born again from above," as a way of understanding and describing what has happened.

Once we are born of the Spirit of God, an immediate change begins to happen; not only of being forgiven of sins and a huge weight being lifted off of us, but of the Holy Spirit beginning to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ within us, as Paul mentions happening to him. "It pleased God ... to reveal his Son in me" (Gal 1:16).

The ultimate end of God for the Saints is that we are conformed to His image. But to be conformed, we must first have an inner revelation of Him; one that goes beyond mere intellectual understanding.

Jesus Christ is the great object of the focus of the Holy Spirit, as He takes the things of Christ and reveals them to us. This doesn't mean that there will be revelation of Christ outside of what the scriptures reveal, but it means there will be an understanding of what they actually mean in regard to Christ.

While it is good to receive insight and instruction from our brothers and sisters, there must be a place for each individual Christian to have this inner fellowship and revelation of Jesus Christ, otherwise all we deal with are external things, which have undermined Christianity since almost the beginning.

What is the first thing we will begin to understand once we start this walk with the Lord? It is that Jesus in His person is completely and totally different than we are. We won't and don't see this right away, but there is this almost immediate battle that begins as we start to see Christ, which is the Holy Spirit starting to show us how much we fall short of who He is.

Seeing Christ isn't primarily about getting a bunch of head knowledge about Him, it's seeing who He is in light of who we are, and understanding the Holy Spirit is revealing that in order to transform us to be more like He is.

This isn't making the old man better, it's working from the fact that we have died in Christ, and only the life of Christ living within us is to be manifested. This is done a little at a time and not as once, otherwise it would overwhelm us. That's the reason we must be quiet and patient, not getting in a hurry to be conformed to His image, otherwise we get a lot of artificial and outward results, which could deceive us, while losing out on the far more important inner changes, which will then be followed by the outward change.

We need to ask Christ to reveal Himself in us so we can little by little be made to be more like Him. This is what the Christian walk in its entirety is, only it grows to new levels as we see Him clearer and clearer within by the Holy Spirit.

Don't be discouraged when you see yourself in the light of Christ, as the purpose isn't to beat you down, but to call out to the Lord to continue to help and change you to be like Him.