The invited guest, Major Ian Thomas, was the founder and general director of Torchbearers, a Christian organization based in England. His thick British accent and staccato delivery made it a challenge to follow his message. But when he waved his partially amputated finger at the crowd he clearly got my attention.

His message that winter morning was on Moses and the burning bush. It was a story I was familiar with (probably most of us are) but his point was revolutionizing.

The essence of his talk was that it took Moses forty years in the wilderness to realize that he was nothing. It wasn’t until he came across a burning bush – a bush made mostly of worthless, dried-up old sticks, completely engulfed in flames yet not consumed – that Moses finally “got it.” And very quickly, as Major Thomas described the story, I did too.

According to Major Thomas, God was trying to tell Moses, “I don’t need a pretty bush or an educated bush or an eloquent bush. Any old bush will do, as long as I (God) am in the bush.”

Thomas went on to share, “If God is going to use you, he is going to use you. It will not be you doing something for him, but God doing something in you and through you.”

I had spent the previous 12 years of my life as a committed Christian – working to live a successful life for Jesus Christ. I had purpose. I felt alive. Yet there was still something missing. I wasn’t sure what it was.

But that morning it was as though a weight was lifted off my shoulders … Christ living in me … I finally understood plainly where the power source really is. Not I, but Christ living in me.

For many Christians, we live our entire lives not quite understanding the wonderful reality of Ephesians 1:19-20, “(there is) incomparably great power in us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of his mighty strength, which he (God) exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.”

Suddenly, I had confidence – I realized that it wasn’t me pushing, sweating, trying to serve God and people well, but God working in me and through me. For years I had used Revelation 3:20 as I preached to crowds – “I (God) stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”

Even as I shared that passage with others, I thought it was great symbolism. But that morning I realized that it not only was symbolic, it was factual. It was his power – the same power that raised Christ from the dead – now alive in me. Because the Scripture clearly teaches, “Christ now lives in me.”

When one becomes a Christian, the Bible teaches that Christ actually comes into your life. The implications – once one understands them – are tremendous, spell-binding, and transformative.

Personally and spiritually, that was the defining moment in my life. It changed my entire outlook once I finally understood, accepted, and functioned on the basis that Christ lives in me by his own Spirit.

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).

For more information on Luis Palau, go to www.palau.org.