Monday, May 4, 2009

God is Real

I find that I need to remind myself that God is real. This is not from any deficiency of His; the fault is my own. I love to think, I love to discuss, I love to have a healthy argument, but in this God becomes nothing more than an idea. I am so thankful for my mind, but I hate what Satan can do with it. Satan, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus! In the course of my defense of God and the Gospel, I feel like I have created God. After all, I create stories, I create songs, all other practices of this sort do involve invention on my part. The problem is that God is real. He is not subject to my opinions, and He certainly is not formed by them. I hate pride. My boast should be in nothing but Christ. Why can I be great, glorified, and humble? It is because the work is done in me by the Spirit of God, not by me.

I keep coming back to the subject of my inadequacy because I find so much joy in it. Let me make it very clear that I am not beating myself up when I say that I am bad, or useless, or that my efforts are futile. There is enormous freedom in these admissions because I am no longer fighting a battle that I am unable to win, it is in the recognition of my inadequacy that I am enabled by and empowered with the strength of Christ. I get frustrated when I attempt to glorify and serve God on my own because it does not work. I find joy and greater worship when I concede because I am filled with the power that comes from the Spirit of Sonship, the power that causes me to be more than a conqueror.