“According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death.”  Phil.1:20

by Dwight Edwards

D.L. Moody was exactly right when he noted, “Some men have just enough religion to be miserable”. True, vital Christianity was never intended to be a grim resolve to imitate the example of Christ. It is a vibrant, “on the move” spirituality; one which calls us to hang on to the out-flowing, outgoing life of Jesus for dear life. As Paul notes in this passage, his highest aspiration was not a self-absorbed piety but a Christ-radiating, all-out assault on life. Even from a prison cell.

Oswald Chambers puts it so well, “There is no room in the New Testament for sickly piety, but room only for the robust, vigorous, open-air life that Jesus lived – in the world but not of it, the whole life guided and transfigured by God. Beware of the piety that is not stamped by the life of God…Be absolutely and fiercely godly, but never pious.” I love that thought. “On the move” spirituality goes far beyond mere piety; it specializes in becoming “absolutely and fiercely godly”. Something only the irrepressible, fast-flowing life of Christ can produce through us. If we’ll let Him, that is.