I met Major Ian Thomas in Jackson, Tn. more than 40 years ago and was greatly impressed. You can check out his biography on Wikipedia and I suspect you will be impressed also. I met him at a time in my life when I was running myself ragged trying to serve the Lord and in great need of learning what he speaks about in the following comments.
After surrendering to preach at the age of 15 he later started a “slum club” down in the East End of London “out of a sheer desire to win souls, to go out and get them. I was a windmill of activity until, at the age of nineteen, every moment of my day was packed tight with doing things. Thus by the age of nineteen, I had been reduced to a state of complete exhaustion spiritually, until I felt that there was no point going on.” Listen carefully to what he says next, “Then, one night in November, that year, just at midnight, I got down on my knees before God, and I just wept in sheer despair. I said, ‘With all my heart I have wanted to serve Thee. I have tried to my uttermost and I am a hopeless failure.’ That night things happened. The Lord seemed to make plain to me that night, through my tears of bitterness: ‘You see, for seven years, with utmost sincerity, you have been trying to live for Me, on My behalf, the life that I have been waiting for seven years to live through you.'” Thomas later reflected: “I got up the next morning to an entirely different Christian life, but I want to emphasize this: I had not received one iota more than I had already had for seven years!”
Now here’s the quote I want you to remember, “Godliness is not the consequence of your capacity to imitate God but the consequence of His capacity to reproduce Himself in you. It is not self-righteousness but Christ-righteousness, the righteousness that is by faith—a faith that by renewed dependence upon God releases His divine action to restore the marred image of the invisible God.”
It is for that very reason that I continue to say, The Christian life is the life of Christ reproduced in the child of God, by the Spirit of God who conforms him to the Word of God, enabling him to live for the glory of God. It is not what we do for God, but what He does in us that that makes the difference. He is the change agent! It is He who enables us to say, “For to me to live is Christ…“ ( Phil. 1:21).–HDS
