Are you enjoying the Victorious Life?
The Victorious Life is a life of victory over sin. Do you have it?
The Victorious Life is a life of constant fellowship with God. Do you
have it?
The Victorious Life is a life of fruit-bearing. Do you have it?
Do you have the peace of God that passeth all understanding? Do you
have freedom from worry and discouragement so that you are “anxious
in nothing”? Do you have the joy of the Lord, which is independent of
feeling, and independent of circumstances? Are you able _in all things_
to give thanks?
Have you, shed abroad in your heart, the love that suffers long and is
kind, that envies not, that vaunts not itself, is not puffed up, does
not behave itself unseemly, seeks not its own, _is not provoked_?
Do you enjoy in actual experience the fruit of the Spirit, in its
nine-fold variety: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control? (Gal. 5: 22, 23).
Is prayer a precious reality to you, so that you can come to a living,
present Lord to talk over every question that affects your life? Do you
know what it is to ask and receive, to abide in him and have his word
abide in you so that whatsoever you ask you receive? Do your prayers
change things?
Is the Bible to you sweeter than honey and the honeycomb, more to be
desired than gold? Do you go each day to the Word and get a direct
personal message from the Master to your own soul, to meet the very
need of that day?
If this picture of the Spirit-filled Life, as it is given in the
Word of God, does not describe the experience you are having, then
you do not have the Victorious Life. There is something that the
Lord Jesus offers that _you do not have_. You may have some of these
things at times, you may have glorious fruit-bearing, you may know the
Lord in a vital and real way, but if there is not _complete victory_
over sin,――which includes such things as worry, discouragement, lack
of love, irritation, pride, jealousy, impatience, covetousness,
worldliness, lust,――then you do not have the Victorious Life, and there
is an experience in Christ awaiting you which will transform life.
Your lack in these things does not mean, necessarily, that you are not
a Christian, a born-again child of God, saved by the blood of Christ:
it does mean that you are not using in experience what the Lord Jesus
provided for you by his death and resurrection.