God keeps making me aware of the emptiness that is in me. He keeps making me aware of how I can’t fill that emptiness. He keeps making me aware of how impossible it is for me to do anything without Him. I know that I am saved and I know that I have been sealed by the Spirit of God for eternity. I know that I have been justified by the blood of Jesus. I know that His death was the due penalty for the evil thoughts that creep in and through my mind every single day and for the vile sins that I commit in defiance and rebellion to God. I know that I am being sanctified by His Spirit more and more every single day. And I know that on the day the Ruler of this universe returns, I will be glorified with Him; not because of anything that I’ve done, but because of everything that He has already done.

But now more than ever I am aware of the need that I have for Him. Not the need for His blessings, His comfort, His peace, or even His love. I just need Him. I need Him to open the eyes of my heart to make me fully aware of how full and complete He is. I love the Word of God and the immense knowledge that He has revealed to us in it; but even that is insignificant if I don’t have Him to show me what it really means. I am completely disabled and broken without His Spirit living vibrantly through me; and He keeps showing me that even more.

I’m not satisfied with just doing what the Bible says to do. I don’t want to read it just because I think that the knowledge in it is going to bring me some sort of fulfillment, because it won’t. The purpose of Him even giving me His Word is so that I can know Him through it; not to know ABOUT Him through it.

Jesus has commanded us to go and make disciples of all nations; but I see now that that is impossible apart from His Spirit. His Spirit is the power that He has given to the church and to me as an individual. I know that I can repeat out loud to someone what the bible says and the “knowledge” that I have of the Gospel; but I also know that those words are completely empty and non-effective if they haven’t been burned and engraved into my heart by His Spirit.

Every single day He’s showing me more and more how NOTHING in this life is going to go MY way. It’s never going to go how I plan. If it’s not one thing going wrong, it’s something else. And I am so thankful for that now, because I can see His purpose through trials and troubles. He is sanctifying me. He wants me to become like Jesus. He wants my life to me a mirror image of His Son, and He knows that if I find ANY satisfaction in this world apart from JUST HIM, I will not run to Him and fall on my face acknowledging my desperate need for His manifested presence in my life… in my heart.. in my soul.

I don’t fully understand my existence. I don’t fully understand the bible. I don’t fully understand the gospel. I don’t fully understand the cross. I don’t fully understand God. But I do understand that I am no longer satisfied with going through the motions of Christianity. I do understand that I am no longer satisfied with anything less than knowing the power of HIM and seeing it manifested in my life and in the world. And I know that He is showing me His love and desire for my sanctification by removing the things in my life that keep me from coming to know Him more… like my pride, my stubbornness, & my security in things of this world.

He is showing me that everything else in my life is completely irrelevant and pointless besides yearning and seeking for His presence to manifest and His Spirit to enable me to become more like Christ and bring His hope, love, and power to thirsty and starving souls in this world who need their God.

I think the majority of us live this life without ever really thinking about our existence. For those of us who acknowledge God is real; why did He create us? Who are we to Him? What exactly are we doing here? There are so many questions I know all of us have; yet because of the distractions of the world (especially in America), we never really invest anytime into seeking those answers.

God is the origin of all things created and He sustains all things that live; including you and I. We are kept alive by His will; not of our own choosing. We don’t tell our hearts to beat and lungs to breathe. We are not the author of our lives; we didn’t choose to come into this existence. Each human has our very being as the result of the will of God; the Source of LIFE. You have your very life because God has willed and declared that you should BE. He owns us. Not a single one of us has come into existence by chance– each individual life is the result of a decision made by God out of the pleasure of His Own good will. And each life that He creates, He sustains. Our God is so powerful and so much bigger than we think He is; which makes SIN all the more devastating and vile. Who are we to trespass against the ONE who gives us our very life? Who are we to spit in the face and turn our back to the only ONE who can sustain our existence? Every single time we transgress His law, we show how rebellious, ungrateful, and evil we really are.

God made you and I, beings created in His own likeness (Genesis 1:26); who by our own will/initiative (that HE has given us) rebel against and hate Him. It’s so natural for us to hate Him, so natural in fact that we don’t even acknowledge that we do. He gifted us each with our individual lives, yet we despised Him since birth; making ourselves our own lord and master, doing whatever it is that WE please (SIN).

This is why we MUST be born AGAIN (John 3:3). When we are truly born again, God supernaturally takes our God-hating heart and gives us a heart of flesh; regenerating us into a God-loving and God-fearing creature. If you’ve been biblically born-again, your life would have dramatically and undeniably been changed and transformed based on “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”- 2 Corinthians 5:17. If you have seen no change in your life since the time you started calling yourself a Christian, you need to do business with God. Salvation is too important to be unsure of and Hell is too torturous to risk going. Seek the only One who holds the power of forgiveness of sins; Jesus Christ. Ask Him to pull you into the refuge of His salvation and to keep you spotless and blameless until the day of His return. On that day there will be no more mercy; only sentencing. Know where you stand with Him now.