Bill Loveless
I was blessed to be introduced to Bill by a mutual friend. After I learned of the impact Major Ian Thomas had on his life - I began my pursuit to know him. What did I find? A man devoted to the Grace Life message of Jesus. Not only that, but he also lives it.
We welcome Bill to the IM Author Blog team. We hope you are blessed through his entries. Please take time to read his mini-bio and the bottom of this post.
Welcome aboard, Bill.
Dr. Phinney
I have started discipling a man who is beginning to receive revelation of what it means that Christ is his Life and his Source. As with me, and perhaps many of you, to understand Life in Christ when we had been living mostly from ourselves as the Source is a spiritual mind bender. Especially if you are “long in the tooth” like me. (If you are too young to understand that expression, it means old.) In our first face to face meeting, my new disciple was telling me that he and his wife were getting ready to move to another city to be near their adult son and family. He admitted that like me he is a “DO-er.”
As we were talking, he shared that the one word that the Holy Spirit is using to help him understand Christ as his Life is the word “WE.” I asked him what he meant. He said that instead of “me” doing all that needs to be done to make the move, “WE”, God and me, will do that together. I could tell that one word was sinking into his heart and pivoting him towards a deeper understanding of God as His Source.
I trust you know and believe that you are in an inseparable union with God. If not, look at what Jesus says in John 14:20:
“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”
The good news about living in union with God as our Source means it is no longer “I” who is living life. It is now WE who are living life in union with each other. That is why I used the picture of the four rings because the trinity plus you makes WE. I must admit since that conversation, the Lord has not let me let go of that word. I had not consciously been thinking WE but now I have adopted it in my thoughts and actions and it gives me a greater sense of my union with Him. In fact, as I sat down to write this, I asked, “What are WE going to write?”
The difference between living from I or WE is Life or death. Living from “I” will keep us self-focused, self-absorbed and self-sufficient which will result in living from the death of self (flesh). Whereas living from WE means we live in total dependence on God as our Source, our Healer and our Transformer which produces Life. Whether you have known about our union with God for years or are just learning it for the first time, we all still have to make a choice.
Therefore, what will be your choice in 2022? “I?” or “WE?”
Ian Thomas said, “God never intended for you to live the life that only Christ can live in and through you.” When I first heard those words in the Fall of 1998, I was stunned! Why? I had become a Christian at age 18, but in the ensuing years I believed that it was up to me to live the Christian life with God’s help. As a result, I worked for God, trying to be worthy enough to earn His love and to be accepted by Him. It was a life of jumping through religious hoops and hoping to measure up to God’s standards for living the Christian life. During that time, I had tremendous struggles with inadequacy, fear, and anxiety. I would read the promises of freedom, victory, healing and transformation but none of them were becoming an experiential reality in my life. The abundant life promised by Jesus in John 10:10 seemed unreal and impossible to ever experience.
After 30 years of living this “performance-driven” life, I was exhausted, in despair, and ready to give up! It was at that point that God revealed to me the truth through Ian Thomas that it is not about me living the Christian life FOR God. Rather, it is about God living His life in and through me. As a result, at age 48 I began letting God do this, and He began to make radical changes in my life. The greatest transformation came in the form of freedom from my bondage to inadequacy, fear, and anxiety. As I began to experience His transforming power in transforming my life, my passion grew to share these truths to Christians. I closed my business, and in 2001 I went into full-time ministry to share with others these same life-transforming truths that are so radically impacting my life.
