Two Realities 

Once we come to know Christ, we carry with us two realities: the spiritual and the carnal or worldly. When we get saved, we come with all our biases, religious upbringings, desires, dysfunctions, and our sometimes inaccurate and limited understanding about God into this new relationship. Unless these things are given over to God and replaced with the perspective of His enlightened understanding, it will interfere with the effectiveness of our walk.

            We throw words, phrases, and Scriptures around like cliches and don’t really understand not only the personal implication, but the practical application as well. Understanding is absolutely necessary for change and growth. We cannot act on and truly believe something we do not understand. 

            Change can be a big issue for a Christian. But why don’t we want to change and why is it seem to be so hard? I think one of the reasons is because we do not understand the nature of spiritual change. In the world, we learn that changing behavior is seen as a way to alter the action of the flesh so as to make it  more self-empowering and self-confident.

            As spiritual beings, we go to God for growth, strength, direction, and motivation not to empower the flesh, but to remove its hold on the inner man. Religion empowers the flesh; spiritual relationship with God weakens the world's hold on us.

            We get confused over the connection and interaction of the outward and the inward and the theoretical and the practical. We know the Scriptures, but we aren’t quite sure how to apply them to our daily lives. We desire to grow, but we seem stalled.

            We pray for personal change and wait and wait and wait. We forget that we do not war against flesh and blood; the war is deeper, it is a spiritual battle in a physical environment.

            When I wanted to go back to college, I could have wanted it until I was ninety. It is easy to see that in order for me to actually benefit from the experience, I needed to do more than just want it. I needed to act on it. Take physical steps. Somehow we don’t understand the physical connection to spiritual truths. We don’t think that that kind of logic has any place in spiritual matters.

          Just as we can look at the natural wold around us to understand God's glory, we can rely on the spiritual principles presented in God's Word to guide our natural steps. Isiah 30:21 tells us: "This is the way, walk in it." The way is Jesus and our steps lead us ever closer to His truth and life.