I wonder how many feel the same way.
When you know the real thing, you can’t settle for imitations.
If there is something that I want for my life is to be real and have a genuine, authentic relationship with God and experience of faith.If we are not careful, we could easily give in to our emotions and let them steer the way to showcast the experience with God that we pictured for ourselves. When our lives are aimed toward our own spritiual objectives (not toward God’s), our emotions take the lead and we can interpret them as divine or God-generated sensations.
How do we get away with it? We replace those difficult problems or aspects of ourselves— where God wants to have a word of correction, a command or an instruction— with our own thoughts, conclusions and justification toward ourselves or even a plain disregard toward the matter. What we don’t realize is that, when we do this, God is not our center. We are only centered, driven and motivated by ourselves.
In doing this, our sprituality remains unfruitful and without real purpose— it is only ornamented by other things that we have self-proclaimed as spritually important. It may still look pretty from some angles, but the whole picture is a life stumbled upon many contradictions and that is not pretty.
But, it’s much easier to do and we tend to be fine with it but the fact is that it won’t work if we are trying to have a relationship with God. Well, if we want to have a real one.
In contrast to letting our hearts be the designer and commander of our spiritual path; having a real relationship with God requires spritual submission which is not an easy thing to do. This is probably the reason why so many end up settling for the imitation version of walking with Christ.
“Then Jesus said to his disciples: Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” Matthew 16:24
Submitting spiritually to God requires that we die to our own self so that Christ may live in us. This means that we will submit to God the darkest, most hidden areas of our personalities so they can be dealt with and changed to what God likes and approves. It means that every day we let him be the Master at work in ourselves.
If we want to live a genuine relationship with God, that is not overriden by our own self, we need to be conscious about it’s implications and we can’t let our hearts play the part.
What do we do then?We surrender. We present ourselves honest to God. We diligently prove ourselves against the Word watching if we are actually pleasing God.
“So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! “1 Cor. 10:12
We maintain a heart that is constantly asking:
How can I be more like Jesus?Could I be wrong? What is the right thing to do?
We do not settle. We search for continuous improvement understanding that there will always be an opportunity to change and grow.
We cry out and beg to the Lord as in Psalms 51:
“Create in me a pure heart, O God,
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.”
