Do you ever feel like your spiritual life is incomplete? We tend to separate things God always meant to go together. We say we are a thinker or a feeler. A “be” person or a “do” person. A “truth” person or a “Spirit” person. Take a journey to explore the spiritual change that’s possible when learn how to reunite these areas of your Christian life: head + heart, being + doing, truth + spirit, and sinner + saint. God never meant for you to relate to Him with only part of yourself.B&H Publishing
Day 1
Scripture: Matthew 22:37
Head + Heart
Does God feel distant these days?
If so, it can be easy to assume that He has neglected or forgotten us. We might begin to think that, in this season, He doesn’t care to speak to us. But what if the distance we feel from God isn’t from His end, but from ours?
To be close to someone else requires both parties to come toward one another. For us as followers of Christ, our call is to come to Him fully, wholly, and completely. Like the verse above says, we are to approach Him with our head and our heart. The problem is, it’s easy for us to hold parts of ourselves back.
Some of us are natural at relating to Him with our hearts. We trust Him and are comfortable with Him. We believe that to be relational with Him, or to feel His presence in everyday life, is more important than just to study about Him.
Others of us are more comfortable relating to Him with our heads. We want to understand God accurately, because we believe this understanding is vital to living the Christian life.
The thing is: God will not settle for less than us relating to Him with ALL that we are.
I’ve watched my husband go on this journey over the last few years. He loves stories from history, reads constantly, and can retain a lot of names, places, and dates in his brain. As a child he was riveted by the stories of David and the battles of Joshua. He has faithfully learned Scripture over many years.
A few years ago, he was challenged to begin his devotional time by writing down his emotional state and beginning his prayer time by bringing that to God. He was very confused by this. He was never emotional with God. He quickly went back to the Psalms, written by the David he knew so much about, and realized that most of them involved David expressing his heart and emotions before God. David was relating to Him with his heart and not just his head.
Through this simple process, my husband began opening himself up to God in a whole way. He began to trust Him with his heart. In return, the Lord revealed himself in brand new ways to my husband. Scripture came alive in new ways. One day, he walked out of the room where he reads his Bible and said, “Kathryn, seek ye FIRST!”
He had read the Scripture about seeking the kingdom of God first for all his life, but once he began relating to God in this new way, something in the words he had studied all his life began to take on new meaning.
What about you? Do you tend to relate to God with your head? Could you possibly benefit from opening the depths of your heart to God as well? Or is that your strong suit, and you need to grow by simply understanding who God is through studying his Word, maybe even for the first time? Pray that God would give you a way to approach Him more fully as we pray for a more vibrant life with Him in the days ahead.
Day 2
Scripture: John 4:23-24
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.
Day 3
Scripture: John 15:5
Being + Doing
The most compelling thing about us is Jesus.
We should ask ourselves: are we allowing enough space for Him?There’s enough activity.There’s enough information.There’s enough talent.But is there enough of Jesus? Is there enough of His Spirit?The need of the hour is for the presence of God to break through—for an outpouring of the Spirit to capture all our hearts again.No matter what century of history you study, you will see a pattern in what the Holy Spirit is saying and doing. As A.W. Tozer says, “From the day of Pentecost on down to this present hour, there is only one thing on the Holy Spirit’s mind: to fill the Church with His glorious presence. His message is simply, ‘Empty yourself, and I, the Holy Spirit, will come fill you to overflowing.’”To experience this sort of communion with Christ takes a lifestyle of being with Him. We can’t produce it on our own. We can’t make it happen. This is the slow transformative work of Christ is us. It is the work that happens in the vine and the branch. It is organic. It requires time. For us, it means times of silence and solitude before the Lord. It is of utmost importance to our lives as followers. Jesus modeled this in His life. He consistently escaped to find time to pray and be with His Father. However, He didn’t stop with just “being.” He led a life of “doing” as he embraced His Father’s mission. He touched people, He performed miracles. He went to the Temple to study the Scriptures.He didn’t just escape in solitude, and we can’t either. We must leave our prayer closets to affect the lives around us that need the truth of Jesus. Like Him, we must embrace a life of both being AND doing. What about you? In which one of these do you need to grow today? Pray for greater wholeness in the days ahead.
Day 4
Scripture: Ephesians 2:1-10
Sinner + Saint
Before Christ, we were all sinners, in need of Him to save us from ourselves. Even after salvation, we will always struggle with sin this side of eternity. However, Christ has now named his followers “saints.” It’s unbelievable, really, that as we follow Him, we have new names. Who are we to be called His sons and daughters, His co-heirs, His church, His priesthood, His saints?
It’s humbling that he changes our whole identity.
While we were dead, God made us alive, and even though we didn’t earn it, He has raised us up with Christ and seated us in the heavenly realms. We have a new position and a new title. A new name.
Still, our sin is still present. Our battle with sin continues, and we walk in deceit if we don’t go to war with it daily. The difference is, we fight it from the posture of a victorious warrior, because we’ve been given a title and authority that has great power.
Many of us can be more comfortable with the idea of being a sinner, or a saint. How could we grow into a fuller picture of our identity as followers of Jesus? He has given us a name: “saint.” And while we are still living on the earth, we still will battle with sin. We must have a robust understanding of both parts of ourselves as we relate to God. Without knowledge of our sin, we will only see ourselves as perfect. We will live blind to the sin that so easily entangles us (Heb. 12:1), and we will eventually fall. Without knowledge of our sainthood, we will live hopelessly, only seeing ourselves as scum. It’s in the tension of both that we truly relate to God the way we’re supposed to on this side of eternity. Where do you need to grow into a more whole understanding of your identity before him?