LIVING IN A REALITY OF CHRIST

Someone I know is fond of saying, “The way you see it – so it must be.” That’s a profound statement. Reality remains subject to each person who interprets it. How you perceive reality will govern you. What is your own point of view?

God wants you to understand what He’s saying so your subjective (understood) view coincides in truth with the natural, spiritual and supernatural reality (life) that God has opened for you to live in. Jesus said, “I am the truth, the way and the life.” When you live what God has for you in the way He makes for you, what you take by faith and your reality (life) become the same. 

You live in the fullness of the life God has given you through and in Jesus.

In Romans 12:2b, Paul lays out the principle when he says, “...be transformed by the renewing of your mind....” We have to understand, think, and ultimately live according to the truth of what God has given us.

Peter, the impulsive (perhaps unstable) fisherman got it. He left his prior understanding (which was reality for him) and the constructs that governed his life and went on to confirm Jesus’ work on the cross and God’s love through signs, wonders and miracles. In his first letter, Peter says in the first chapter, verse thirteen: “Therefore, gird up the loins of your mind....” -- that is, keep your mind strong, prepared and protected.

Grab what God is saying here: you need to protect both your mind and its strength to gain life in God and experience your true God-given reality. This is how we begin to live in the promised supernatural provision and life that God teaches in the Bible.

So the challenge is to understand God, His purpose, and what he has done – and to believe. When you do, your understanding through faith will open a new reality for you – and a corresponding new life!

Before I met Jesus, I didn’t take into account the existence of any God, much less a God Who could know me and who I could know (a real person). Yet that God and the host of evil were already working in my life. And although I was surrounded by a spiritual dimension, I didn’t realize it, nor did I know I was controlled by spirits.

In a very real sense, my life was a play. I lived as directed by evil. I was an actor playing the part that Satan assigned to me. The part I played was not the real life available in and given by God, but a sub-life created in a bubble. I accepted evil’s tale as true life much like Jim Carey in The Truman Show accepted his life. As he was in the movie, I was an actor in a created life which was not the life truly available – it was created by lies and sleight of hand. But like Carey in the movie, the possibility existed to understand and to open the door and see and live the real life available outside the bubble. That is what God offers us in Jesus Christ. 

The only correct understanding I had was that I lived in a human body. I lived a life based upon a complete lack of understanding of my true condition. I was living tragedy and my manifest life was largely fantasy: I became a sexy pirate smuggler to make living in the bubble tolerable.

At the moment I met Jesus, I grasped that everything I had built my life on was false – my conclusions and how I saw everything were based on certain misunderstandings and on an elementary, even primitive, level of knowledge. (Note Isaiah 65:2b.) The moment I encountered Jesus and heard His voice, I knew that my life was all wrong: Shortly after that I learned about evil spirits and how they had controlled me from birth.

The process of my salvation has largely been a process of understanding my environment, the players, and what God has done to take me from where I was to the promised abundant life (still continuing on) and finally into heaven. For me, it was necessary for Him to teach me what I needed to know to navigate in this world and in the spirit world successfully and in truth.

It has been work to leave the theater of my mind and body behind and successfully live the life God wants for me. It has also been the process of learning that God is God – a real God with limitless power who cares for me, and that I am loved, truly loved.

The point is that God has a good and abundant life for us in and through Jesus. 

THE PROGRESSION OF FAITH

In the things of God, simple faith (willingness to try) is the beginning. Faith is later confirmed through experience, understanding and knowledge.

Often a need, for which there is no solution in the natural, will compel you to look into the faith area. Once motivated, faith is the first “concrete” step that opens up the things of God to you: whether it’s a first step to seek Him or advanced steps to grow in your relationship with Him, mature in your new life with Him, and receive the things He has given you as His child. Your initial step of faith in Christ may be nothing more than openness to investigate or explore the things of God through Jesus.

In my case, motivated by a selfish need, I mentally began to explore the possibility of finding a supernatural or spiritual answer. I listened to Christian radio, through which the reality and person of Jesus was preached. As a result I began to think that Jesus was worth a try. And there were other encouragements, including the conversion of my late wife Maggie a short time before, and her insistence on Jesus. At some point, though, for me this “theoretical Jesus” had to become real. 

Experience had to confirm faith.

As an intellectual, my deep faith was, and is, a process. In the beginning I combined a smattering of faith (about the size of the proverbial mustard seed) with an inquiry. I sought to know if God existed. I encountered Jesus (my spirit to Spirit) in a parking lot in Kona, Hawaii, early one morning. He said to me in a clear voice, “You are saved and I am your friend.” 

After meeting Him I sought understanding. It came through experience (relationship) with Him. Then I sought to understand the things of God and the “why” of those things (knowledge). In the process, the world and my growing understanding of the spirit dimension began to make sense: the things of God became logical. 

This progression — from God-seeking, to faith coupled with understanding — created a certainty that the things of God were real, and created a desire for them to become manifest and to get what God had for me.