Pat Mace's Testimony of the Exchanged Life

The following is Pat Mace's testimony of her pilgrimage to the exchanged/ union life focus in an article that she wrote called "Blessed Frustrations":

"At nine years of age, my world was shattered with the death of my mother and grandfather (my mother was divorced and we lived with my grandparents). That experience proved to be my first conscious attempt at communicating with God. I guess that was when I began to ask myself (really God) why I was here. I wondered through my teen years why I hadn't been killed also, as I so easily could have been. I continued to question my own purpose in life.

"When I was eighteen I began attending a small fundamentalist church, and there I heard man's relationship to God explained in a way quite different from what I had been taught as a child. I responded to an invitation to receive Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour.

"The years went by with the ups and downs of life that everyone takes to be real living. Marriage and children were supposed to be fulfilling me, and I was supposed to be happy, especially since I was a Christian. But I wasn't, and I couldn't understand why. The more inadequacies I saw in myself, the more guilt I harbored.

"My frustrations gradually came to a head, and I knew that God had to do something to change me. I still believed that I was in control of my life. I thought I had taken Jesus; I didn't realize that He had taken me. I thought I had to surrender the various areas of my life to God so that He could straighten me out. I didn't realize that He was in control of me, pressing me to the end of myself.

"Life during this period became 'super-spiritual.' As long as I met certain qualifications (e.g., daily quiet time), everything was great. When I didn't, then I had to make myself 'spiritual' again. So my inadequacies continued to surface. Only this time I knew others who were going through similar situations, and by now we had learned to be honest and could share our frustrations together. Mainly, we agonized over why the Christian life was not working.

"I did discover a new dimension to my relationship with the Lord during this time. I began to hear teaching about dying to self. God told me that I was already dead (I was placed into Jesus' death when He died). He also told me I had the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). But it sounded too easy to accept. I was sure I still had to do something. So 'dying to self' became another addition to my list of do's.

"Over the next few years, frustrated at my inability to measure up to my standard of what I thought a Christian should be, I slipped into a severe depression. Life became a void, an empty existence. I vacillated from blaming myself for my actions to blaming God for all that was happening to me. I demanded to know why He didn't make me a good person. My conscious contact with Him was practically nil, and sometimes I doubted He existed at all.

"With all of my previous practice of hiding my real feelings, on the outside I managed to make my life look fine. But inside I was hurting. I longed for someone with whom to talk and share my problems, but there was no one.

"So I decided I must fulfill myself in outer ways in order to find the inner fulfillment I craved. I took a part-time job, went back to college, and became very socially involved---all of this while being a wife and mother to three small children. I was becoming physically exhausted.

"By the spring of 1977, I had had enough. I knew I was at the end of myself and that all of my self efforts had failed. I remembered a friend in Cleveland, Jim Seward, whose studies I used to attend. I remembered his relaxed attitude towards life. He used to say that we do not have to do anything to live the Christian life; God does everything.

"All I could think of was getting back to Cleveland for one of the studies, for I knew it could help me. In the meantime, I found a book in our closet that I didn't even know we had. It was The Liberating Secret.

"As I read that book, I began to see light at the end of the long tunnel that I had been living in. In my mind my wilderness period had ended. I was free! Free from having to do anything. I was never meant to do anything. I was only meant to 'be,' to contain God--Father, Son, and Spirit.

"I learned that everything is God; all life, the whole universe, is part of Him. I began to understand why I had to go through such hell in living. Everything in life which we consider bad or wrong is only the negative side of God. We cannot have a positive until we have had the full negative. There is no light without darkness, no yes without no. God had pushed me to try every possible way of fulfilling myself. I had to know the whole negative before I could understand the positive.

"Life was falling into focus. I knew that I was crucified with Christ. I did not have to try to die to self, because I was already dead. I had died when He died; now it was Christ who was living in me. That knowledge completely changed my self-image. I could finally accept myself.

"But over the next few months, I realized there was still a problem. I was still looking at the outer, still seeing myself negatively. I would often lose my temper, especially when my children didn't behave the way in which I thought they should. With no control, I would fly into a rage over something of little importance. As a result I was plagued by guilt feelings. After much agonizing, God showed me Romans 8:1: 'There is no condemnation' (no adjudging guilty of wrong) for those who are in Christ Jesus. I realized that God didn't place any guilt on me; I projected it all on myself. That realization freed me from it.

"But I still had the temper problem. Finally the Lord showed me that the new, crucified 'I' was not supposed to live the life that only Christ could live. The new 'I' had to learn its utter helplessness, just as the old self had.

"What liberation! I was finally free to just be myself--what I had longed for all of my life. I know in my whole being that I am a vessel to contain God (that is what I was created for). He showed me in many ways that I was His container. When I remember that I am only a container, it takes all the pressure off me to perform.

"I am now beginning to see the relationship a little differently. I am a container, but also joined to Him. Christ and I are one. I am in Him and He in me. 'He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit' (1 Cor. 6:17). I am the means (soul and body) through which He expresses Himself (Spirit). He needs me and I need Him. We complete each other.

"That brings me up to the present. I cannot go beyond that. I know there is much, much more to learn, but I'm not grasping after anything new or waiting for God to take me further. I am completely satisfied in Him!"