WHOLE: Relating to God With All of YourselfSample

Spirit + Truth

One interesting thing about the Christian life is that we believe not only in things that are concrete and visible to our eyes but also in things that are supernatural and invisible.

If we believe the Bible, we believe that God spoke creation into existence with His breath. We believe that He spoke through bushes of fire and through thunderbolts and whispers. His presence in the Old Testament took the form of things like clouds and fire. The Spirit of God gave life and power to the Church and brings life and power to us now. These invisible kingdom realities are at the root of our faith. Occasionally, they might feel like fantasy, but our faith reminds us that these things are just as real as anything we see.

God is always reminding us that His unseen Kingdom is a reality.

We spend our time thinking about the visible world, but 2 Corinthians 4:18 calls us to fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. If we want to follow Him, there will be an otherworldliness to our lives, because we are fixing our eyes on the kingdom of God and not the kingdom we can see before our eyes.

Sometimes we don’t show interest in this other kingdom not only because it is invisible, but also because it feels far in the future. But the truth is that the kingdom of God is not just for the future but exists in the present. According to A.W. Tozer, the kingdom of God “parallels our familiar physical world, and the doors between the two worlds are open.”

This is the Spirit realm, and this realm is a reality for us as believers. For those of us that are comfortable dealing with the truth of God, what would it look like to start paying attention to the Spirit of God? What would it look like to remember the words Jesus spoke to the woman at the well?

On the other hand, when we become comfortable with spiritual experience but neglect being deeply rooted in truth, we might not even be relating to the God of the Bible. We can’t know the Jesus we worship without the Word. We are susceptible to demonic influence and our own imaginations without it.

Sometimes we don’t show interest in the Word because we feel ill-equipped to understand it. For those of us in this camp, we can remember that God spoke His Word in existence for the adult and for the child, for every culture and every generation, for both the cognitively astute and the cognitively challenged. He can bring things to light from His Word to us all. We don’t get a grade, and we have a lifetime to grow in understanding.

Another challenge to growing in the Word is that we might find it dry. In this case, we can pray for the Spirit to illuminate it. We can pray for a new desire to understand the real Jesus. Much of the Spirit’s role is to illuminate the Word and bring it to our minds. He uses the Word to convict us and redirect us.

We can’t really separate our worship of God into truth and spirit. God calls us to worship Him with both. In which way do you need to grow? Pray that you can start doing that today.