11-21-24-DAILY READING-ENG.

EXPERIENCING THE SPIRIT

                         BETTER THAN KNOWING YOURSELF

So what about our natural talents and past experience? Will God use them, or will He always use us in areas where we're naturally weak? God created you with your unique abilities, and He does want to use them. But He's far more concerned that you know Him than that you know your abilities. The world tells us to affirm self, but God tells us to deny self. Your identity and self-worth are found not in your abilities, but in your relationship to Christ. We love to be in control. That's our nature—our fallen nature, that is. But we were created for a relationship with our Creator whereby He is in control. Ever since that relationship was torn apart by sin, we struggle to trust Him, for we don't know Him as we ought.

It's much easier to put our faith in our ability, for we know our limitations and what we can accomplish. We know in our head what the Bible teaches, but we have a hard time putting God's truth into practice. In many cases, we're theologically conservative believers but practical atheists. We struggle to live out what we say we believe. The life and the belief system don't match. But when it comes to theological matters, our goal isn't intellectual excellence but the deepest experience of all that God has purposed for our lives, based on theology that we know to be true. Therefore the only way to experience the Spirit working in our lives is to trust and obey. To trust in God, we have to know Him intimately.

It's not that we aren't aware of how much God can do; we just aren't living in a relationship with Him where we're confident He'll do all that much in our own lives. As a result, many Christians trust their own experience over the truth of God's Word. That's why the Holy Spirit continually points us to the Lord. That's why His greatest task is to help us know and experience a personal relationship with God. When we do obey, however, God can accomplish more through us in six days than we could do in sixty years with our best efforts alone.

 In fact, without the Spirit working through our lives, everything we do is dead works. Jesus wasn't exaggerating when He said, “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing (John 15:5). We rarely consider that God gave us His Spirit because “self” could never accomplish the assignment He has for us. Only through His Spirit are we equipped for service.