Are You A Vessel Of Christ?

By Author: Mark Virkler
Total Articles: 9
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I teach at Christian Leadership University. While teaching one of my seminars I felt a sense of confusion and discomfort. I was teaching about being a vessel of Christ, but something didn’t feel right. So, went to the Lord in prayer and asked several questions. Why was I uncomfortable? How do you, God, want me to teach this class? Those questions led to other questions. Are we supposed to be vessels? Is that all we are or is there more? God answered my questions and I wrote down what he told me.

Below is part of that prayer and what God told me.

Q. So, Lord, what was my problem? Why am I uncomfortable when I teach the seminar on Naturally Supernatural?

Mark, you have been accentuating the fact that you are a vessel. Mark, you are more than a vessel -- there is also an organic union. Eventually you become conscious of Me at all times; there is no more this illusion of separation, that I am something within you and separate from you. There comes the revelation that we are one, and so life and vocabulary take on a whole new perspective.

You no longer say that “I am the negative and God is the positive.” ...
... You are joined to God, so you have become positive, for you have learned to live out of your roots at all times, and to be conscious of your roots at all time. You are no longer self conscious. You are constantly Christ conscious. So you no longer say, “I am the negative and Christ is the positive.” The new reality is that the two have become one. You say “I” and you mean “Christ.” So you begin saying, “I am the positive.”

There is a progression. You go from speaking of:

- “I” living, out of my own strength, to
- “I” stepping to the indwelling Christ Who is my life, to
- “I” living who is the “Christ I” living.

Those are the stages one goes through. You are actually in the third stage at this point in your life, and you were talking as though you were in the second stage. Thus you experienced confusion. You have not distinguished the fact that there is a progression in one’s revelation and thus one’s vocabulary as he goes through this process.

Thank You, Lord.

We all go through our lives in Christ, we all go through these phases of our understanding of who we are in Christ, though we may not fully understand that we are going through these stages. I challenge you to consider these truths in prayer and ask yourself,

“What stage am I in?”

Mark Virkler is with Christian Leadership University. CLU is a Christian University and Online Bible College offering Christian education including Christian counseling and Christian theology seminaries and offers certificates, undergrad, Masters, and Doctorates in the various Christian colleges of CLU. http://www.cluonline.com