Photo credit: Potatojunkie; / Foter; / CC BY-NC-ND
Imagine a house made of wood. All the boards are cut and carefully put in place, but nothing is nailed down. Nothing is solid. Would you want to go into that house?You certainly wouldn’t want to live there. To make it a safe, strong place to live you would have to nail everything together.
And yet, that’s how we often “build” our spiritual lives. I live surrounded by Christians who love truth. We get excited about it! Boy, is that good! And we leave church thinking that we can walk in the revelation truth we just heard. Then we run to collect the next big thing from God.
When we try to walk in that truth we often find that we can’t. We fail. We aren’t who we think we are, who we say we are. God is real. And we are called to lives of real influence. People may not read the Bible, but they certainly read us. To many people we are the message. We need to be real.
When we receive revelation, something that we know in our spirits is true, but don’t take the steps to settle it and make it part of our lives, it may stay in place for a while. But the first big wind that comes along will blow it down.
Settle Some Things
“Settle some things,” God said. I heard this again and again over several months. “Go deeper.” God was telling me that the process of settling truth into our very being is a key to catapulting our spiritual growth and influence.
As I was thinking how to express what He was showing me, I wrote down lists of words to express each part of the process He showed me. I put them together and realized God had just shown me how to be REAL.
God’s Process for Being REAL
Revelation. God initiates. He loves us so we can love Him. He shows us things like who He really is, who we are, and the meaning and purpose of life. Revelation is an invitation to encounter Him, to experience the truth He reveals.
Encounter. Everything about our life with God is relational. He makes it clear that we can’t do one single thing without Him. But He invites us to do everything with Him. He’s the really cool Dad who always wants to do things with His kids.
Application. We don’t really know something until we start doing it. A teenager will spend hundreds of hours being driven around in a car, but she really doesn’t learn how to drive until she does it. How much more true this is with spiritual things. Revelation truly isn’t ours until we drive it for a while. Then it becomes part of us.
Life and Light. The world and religion try to change people by changing what they do. God’s way is to change us from the heart out. God changes who we are. Then, living in that new identity it is natural for us to do things differently.
“...let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” Romans 12:2 (NLT)
As God becomes real to us, we reflect the real God. And through us God becomes real to others.
Be influential; let the deep truths of God settle down in your heart and make you REAL!
“Jesus, what do I need to settle that will catapult me to maturity and real influence?”
About Dave Milford
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