There is a secret to union with God and it doesn’t stroke my ego or fleshly pride. It isn’t about something I perform well or a standard I attain. How I would have loved it to be a methodology or series of to-do’s. That way I could reserve my heart in case I failed to reach my goal. No, this secret exposes me to the whole gamut of emotion.
To enter this place of intimacy with God, I need to possess a new life. My old self wasn’t cutting the mustard because it wasn’t truly interacting with God, as I would have liked. Now, I am not primarily speaking of salvation. I was saved but I wasn’t accessing all that that purchase obtained. At salvation we are made new, the problem is we often don’t see it or live in it.
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self
with its practices and have put on the new self,
which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.
Colossians 3:9-10 ESV
The Amplified Bible quotes verse 10 like this: And have clothed yourselves with the new [spiritual self], which is [ever in the process of being] renewed and remolded into [fuller and more perfect knowledge upon] knowledge after the image (the likeness) of Him Who created it.
My new man has new ears and a new heart. This new life is the basis of any deep relational interaction with God. I have been given a new nature. Actually, I am entirely a new creation and by faith I receive it. The old me will never be quiet or still. It cannot, and my wrestling with that self is futile.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV
So I found hope in this truth. The hindrance was me, the old me who makes deals with God. The one who tries and tries, only to fail. So the first part of this secret is source. Who is responding to God’s invitation to fellowship – the old me or my new creation? So the next obvious question needing to be answered is, HOW?
[…] I know from what I saw that this man knew nothing more about Martha. Just like God, if you wish to speak He will let you flow. But if you wish to know Him you must silence your compulsion to talk and wait to hear. Who knows, the ministry of the Spirit might have been to hear rather than to speak. How many countless years has Christ had to listen to me? Ugh! I speak no judgment on anything that transpired, I am just rejoicing in the fact that I saw the Spirit of the Living God moving through… Read more »
[…] how to get along with God. Well, I don’t know how you do that without the Cross. John’s post on the reality of a new creation brilliantly high-lighted Colossians 3:10 in the Amplified […]