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C H RI ST EMPOWERED
LIVI NG Life-changing teaching that has transformed multitudes
Selwyn Hughes Foreword by Dr Larry Crabb
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CONTENTS Foreword by Dr Larry Crabb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. Meet Your Designer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2. The Designer’s Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 3. Who Broke the Mirror? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 4. Magnificent Ruins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 5. The Spread of the Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 6. How Problems Develop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 7. There’s More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 8. Living Dangerously . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137 9. God’s Perfect Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155 10. Restoring the Image . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173 11. Staying on Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 12. Three Vital Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 13. More about Staying on Course . . . . . . . . . . . . .231 14. How Then Shall We Live? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251 A Spiritual Checkup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271
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PREFACE good deal of my life has been spent counselling people with problems. Most of them have been Christians, people whose character and standing were in no doubt. With this group I have been forced to conclude that the majority were definitely not hypocrites; they were good men and women. Yet they lacked the inner strength and poise which the New Testament says is the inevitable consequence of Christ living. Endless hours have been spent trying to help such people understand and overcome those things that hinder the life of God within them spreading to all parts of their personalities. Often I found the cause of their problems was that they had not given Christ access to the whole of their being, and thus they were almost the same defeated people they were before they accepted Him into their lives. Knowing Christ had not made much difference in their lives. This book contains the spiritual rationale by which I have operated in helping such people overcome their problems and move towards the kind of life where they exchange their own natural enthusiasm for Christ’s abundant and inexhaustible resources – to experience Christ Empowered Living. I am convinced that the human soul can only be satisfied when Christ becomes the prime focus of its attention. Only He can assuage the ache for life and reality that throbs in every human heart. In many ways this book is the culmination of my life’s work. I write in the fifty-first year of my ministry, having spent a lifetime studying the genesis of human problems and working out scriptural answers to them. I have been helped in this task by many others – some personal friends, whose thoughts and ideas have aided me in building a framework for thinking about people from a biblical per-
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spective. I have drawn heavily on their ideas in compiling this book. My deepest appreciation goes out to men like John Wallace, principal of the college where I was trained for the ministry; Dr W. E. Sangster, a famous Methodist leader who taught me to preach; Dr E. Stanley Jones, the well-known author and one-time missionary to India, who inspired me to write; Dr Clyde Narramore, the wellknown counsellor based in California, and psychologist Dr Dan Allender. Chief among them all is Dr Larry Crabb, whose counselling insights have added richly to my work as a preacher, writer and counsellor and whom, as you will discover, I quote liberally throughout this volume. My warmest thanks, too, goes to my one-time colleague Rev Trevor Partridge, who worked alongside me for more than twenty years and assisted me in integrating new insights into the many courses we taught together in different countries of the world. My final tribute is to Dr G. Campbell Morgan, one-time pastor of Westminster Chapel, London, whose monumental work The Crises of the Christ gave me my first insights into the way God designed our personalities to work and function. I have written for plain people and avoided as much as possible the jargon of counsellors. To be as simple and as practical as possible has been my aim. Eight key issues form the thesis of this book. I introduce them to you now so that they can become helpful guideposts for you as you move from one chapter to another. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6
The life behind and within the universe is the life of a God who is good and who has our highest interests at heart. Relationship is the essence of reality. Nothing in heaven or earth can be greater than this. God designed us, after His own image, as relational beings. We are built to relate first to Him and then to others. Sin has struck deep into human nature and distorted the divine image. No longer do we function as we were designed. All spiritual/psychological problems have a relational com-
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P R E FA C E
6. 7. 8.
ponent to them. We live dangerously when we fail to recognise this. Only in Christ can we live the life that God intended for us. He is at work in us to restore the divine design. Our problems can be resolved and overcome only when we decide to put Christ where He belongs – at the centre. God’s purpose in coming into our lives is that He might pass through it in blessing to others.
Christ Empowered Living has been designed mainly for individual reading, but the concepts it contains can also be taught in a group setting. Comprehending the biblical reasons problems develop and how, through Christ’s empowerment, we overcome them, contributes greatly to richness of living and spiritual maturity. The first five chapters lay down the theological foundation for my thinking as it relates to the divine design that has gone into the construction of our personalities. God paid us the highest compliment He could ever give us when He made us in His image. Some readers may find the first five chapters which set out to explain what it means to be bearers of the divine image and how that image has been defaced and deformed, heavy going, and may prefer to skip those chapters and go to Chapter Six where we come to grips with the issue which experience shows intrigues so many: How Problems Develop. One biblical text has guided my thinking through this entire volume. It first appeared in one of the most passionate prayers ever uttered by the great apostle Paul. It is my prayer, too, as I invite you to walk with me into the kind of living God planned for you from the very beginning: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. (Eph. 3:20–21)
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Chapter One
MEET YOUR DESIGNER
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E
very Christian longs to live a divinely empowered life, a life that rises above circumstances and is not beaten or defeated by problems. This is precisely the kind of life that is offered to us in the New Testament. It tells us that we can have the life of Christ as our life. Those who commit their lives to the Saviour can say with the apostle Paul, “For me to live is Christ.” This means more than receiving Christ’s help, as a flower receives the energy from the sun. It means receiving Christ Himself. He is not saving us from without but actually living within us – thinking, feeling, willing in the life of His obedient servants. Why is it then that so many Christians say, “If Christ lives in me and I have the promise of divine empowerment, why do I get so overwhelmed with life’s problems?” If I were to count the number of times I have been asked this or a similar question, I think it would run into thousands. As a first-hand observer of the Christian life for more than fifty years, time and time again I have talked to many people who wondered aloud why, with Christ resident in their lives, they couldn’t overcome the crippling anxieties, fears, compulsive thoughts or obsessive and compulsive behaviours that sometimes beset them. On one occasion a woman, well-known as a keynote speaker on the Christian women’s conference circuit, put this question to me: “Why is it when I am at work in my kitchen and I pick up a sharp knife, I feel strangely compelled to cut myself with it?” She raised this question with me after reading that Princess Diana had confessed in an interview that at one low point in her life she practised self-mutilation. Then there was the man who told me whenever he entered a department store with a large number of entrances and exits he would be seized with panic if he could not remember how to exit through the door by which he entered. The thought that he might return to the street through any other door set up such tremendous anxiety within him that sometimes it incapacitated him. Several 11
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times he required medical assistance before he could leave a store. How can we explain such behaviour – especially in those who claim to have Christ living within them? To ask secular psychologists for an explanation of human behaviour is to come up with answers such as these: •
You are stuck somewhere on the hierarchy of needs.
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You are genetically wired towards aggression and anger.
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Raging hormones are the culprit.
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Instinctual psychic impulses conflict with the dictates of society.
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Your drives have been reinforced by rewarding stimuli.
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You are an Aries with Jupiter rising.
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You are an adult child of unhappy and traumatic experiences.
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You are compensating for perceived inferiority and seeking to acquire better self-esteem.
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You are demon possessed.
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You have no will power.
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You have that kind of temperament.
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What you are telling yourself – your self-talk – gets you into trouble.
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You are having an identity crisis.
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You do not know who you are, and thus you have little basis for self-worth.
Theories about human motivation and what makes people tick get quickly translated into counselling models. Solutions range from taking medication, physical exercise, reparenting, casting out demons, changing your self-talk, getting your needs met, avoiding decision-making when your stars are not properly aligned, getting in touch with your inner pain, and other popular advice. 12