“You can never give another person what you have found, but you can cause him to have a desire for it.”
Oswald Chambers
Soul Life
“‘He has set me free, Living’ ” words my Grandma penned at the bottom of Romans 7. Living. When was the last time you stopped to consider what living means to you? Really living. Are you surrounding yourself with what brings life to your soul? Stop and think about what stirs you deep inside. Makes you feel alive. Causes you to completely lose all track of time and place. Try to harness this feeling for just a moment.
Now allow yourself to consider that this feeling is God. Have you ever thought that God isn’t church, isn’t doctrine, isn’t books, isn’t anything you have perceived? God is Spirit. Spirit is Life. What if feeling alive is actually feeling God? What if doing the thing that makes you feel most alive is worship? If we spend our lives so busy that we never take the time to consider what truly lights us up, we can miss out on ever discovering who God is to us.
As I pour through the pages of the Bible, I note every time I come across another name for God. The list keeps expanding. If God was the same for each person, He would only have one name. But instead, the characters of the Bible, as they experience God for who He was to them, each gave Him the name most fitting. This leads me to the conclusion that my God is not your God. He’s the same entity but very different to each of us. Have you ever looked at a picture, listened to a song, read a book, and taken away something completely different than the next person? What if this is what it’s like to experience God?
Contemplate
What if you spent your life angry at someone else’s God because you just couldn’t understand how He could allow… fill in the blank? Or, what if you spent your lifetime “worshiping” someone else’s God in the way they worshiped and missed out on ever feeling worship and experiencing God? Both scenarios are so tragic but so real. I know because I lived the latter.
I could recite all of the stories, sing all of the songs, rehearse all of the doctrine, and I knew God and Jesus. But I didn’t realize my God and my Jesus. All of the foundational gifts that my parents gave me were so important in giving me a place to start, but they were foundational. And I almost stopped at the foundation, assuming this was it. But I wasn’t living. I was far from living. Going through the motions and living without intention left me empty and tired. If you have read through my blog, I have exposed events that have made me who I am today. But, these details are only meaningful if they help me convey to you, “Look how good my God is, He loved me too much to leave me there!” God, the one I share as my story unfolds, is My God.
Are you open to discovering who Your God can be to you?
Listen here: My Jesus 🎶