In his book, The Life That Wins, journalist Charles Trumbull tells how he discovered the “Victorious Christian Life.” Though a Christian for many years, Trumbull was troubled by great fluctuations in his spiritual experience. One day he would be excited and triumphant; the next, discouraged and defeated by some temptation. He sought to win others to Christ, but saw little success. As the years passed, he became more vexed, especially after hearing a message at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh in 1910 on “The Resources of the Christian Life.” The message had a clear and simple thrust: “The resources of the Christian life, my friends, are just—Jesus Christ.”
Shortly afterward, Trumbull found himself the speaker at a summer missionary conference—a week of daily work for which I was miserably, hopelessly unfit. But on the first night of the conference, Trumbull’s fellow-speaker rose to preach from John 7:37–39, saying that the Christian’s life should flow continuously, not intermittently.
The next morning, Sunday, alone in my room, I prayed it out with God. And God, in His forgiveness and love, gave me what I asked for. It is hard to put into words, and yet it is, oh, so new, and real, and wonderful. At last I realized that Jesus Christ was actually and literally within me; and even more than that: that He had constituted Himself my very life, taking me into union with Himself—my body, mind, and spirit.
There has been an utterly new kind of victory, victory-by-freedom over certain besetting sins—the old ones that used to throttle and wreck me.
Jesus Christ does not want to be our helper; He wants to be our life. He does not want us to work for Him. He wants us to let Him do His work through us, using us as we use a pencil to write with—better still, using us as one of the fingers of His hand.
Robert J. Morgan