GOD'S PAIN PILL Series (Spiritual Interventions)

Christianity is about a life changing relationship.

A SPIRITUAL INTERVENTION

What is lacking, the missing area, is an emphasis on personal relationship with God. It becomes a life that is totally integrated with God. It is about relationship with God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. It is about embracing the arms of Christ and staying there until He begins to change you. It is adding love to love to love to love.

Relationship is relationship.When God becomes real to an individual, then life as a Christ-follower is established on a foundation that will not crumble when life gets hard or disappointing. When you love someone and they love you, you will want to please them. We will draw upon this friend during the hard times. They will be honest with us, speak the truth in love with us. We can depend on this type of friend when we are not at our best.

It can be this way with God. A relationship with God is one of strength and enjoyment, hope and help, love and goodness. It is a reciprocal friendship. The believer goes from duty-bound to love-bound as the relationship becomes closer and more intimate. The areas of obedience and service spring forth out of love for God and also as an outworking of His love in us which grows out of a desire to please Him.

The more we love God, the more we become willing and free to share His love. As the focus changes, the life of faith becomes less to lived by rules, regulations, and scripted spirituality. Healing of our emotions and self’s painful experiences dovetail with the life of relationship held fast in God. This is to know and experience a deepening awareness, an awakening that stirs the soul to radiant life.

Pain is often hidden from view because we put our best foot forward. We often project wholeness and capability. We may believe we have to act like we have it together spiritually. People form certain masks that are sort of a charade or a pretending. We all want to be accepted and respected. It becomes damaging to live this way when we fail to recognize the internal state of affairs within our interior self.

There can be a lot of garbage that needs taking out!

Those who pursue a deepening relationship with God will seek change. And change will come. God uses friends, family, circumstances, and a host of ways to bring us to a place of open talk with Him. This is always good. A soul-changing intervention begins when we get alone with God, take spiritual inventory of everything in our past and present, and ask God what to do about it.

Some of inward issues need to be exposed to the light of God

Now we begin to come clean and honest with God. It is at that place, in the moment of truthfulness with God, that the seeds of soul-changing intervention begin to unlock this inner cell where we unwittingly and unknowingly have hidden our real selves. We begin to surrender to God and begin living our lives His way. God refreshes, heals, and restores. Thus, we establish a transparent identity with God.

We become Father with child and child with Father. This brings us so much, a close, intimate, loving, relationship, one that will bring much joy and inner peace.

It is the best way to live a spiritual life.

Authentic Christianity starts with a spiritual relationship.

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More spiritual insights in the next post.

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©N. L. Brumbaugh

There were things in the Christian life that seemed strange to me. Later on I would come to understand what they meant. It was confusing and contrary to what I idealistically believed to be the true measure of Christian people.

A SPIRITUAL INTERVENTION

There were some people who had been a part of the church who were falling away or in a state of rebellion. Why couldn’t they sustain their faith? Looking back, I realize that some of it wasn’t just because of sinful behavior, some of these people or their behaviors were not understood very well at all. There was more to it than was obvious. People were seen as either inside the camp or outside the camp. There was little gray area or room to debate areas of struggle. The many issues of questionable or wrong behaviors were lumped together as “sinful” and the solution was to repent and get right with God. But we failed to help the person get their life together or deal with their stuff. But it was the expectation for participating in Christian community.

Sin would need to be confessed and then a new beginning could be had. After the prodigal’s return, when a person got right with God, it was expected that a return to the church and a following of God’s ways as set forth by the church and based on biblical principles would yield a path to victory and righteous living. It was a logical conclusion. That was the expectation and the mindset. For some it did work this way. This pattern for living the faithful life was formed with good intentions and quite valuable for addressing truth as it relates to scripture, I don’t knock it. But it wasn’t enough, it fell short. It was missing the most important key principle necessary for living a fulfilling and God-centered life.

Because, in my opinion, it has one major flaw.

Better said, it has one missing component. Within this “sin>repent>rededicate>obedience>serve God” cycle, there is a major lack in its specific parameters for living a victorious Christian life. Some have stumbled upon it like I did, others have found it as they draw closer and closer to the Source. They find God to be the healer and helper, their joy and their deliverer. But many others continue on as they have been taught, equating salvation, prayer, bible reading, bible study, and obedience as the only parts that make up the whole.

Yet, there was that glaring defect. One only had to look around to notice a serious conundrum.

The formula didn’t work for everyone.

There were many who could not function well within the church’s religious parameters. They would eventually abandon their faith. It failed to address those troublesome gray areas. In particular, it didn’t help those who were wounded by life or who were struggling with areas of bondage, people who needed something more than the church was offering.

It is this flaw that has tripped up many a person. It has kept them from returning to the “fold,” and has convinced people that they may never measure up or be good enough to enter fully into the Christian community unless they pretend the part. The equation of spirituality “being spiritual” with a list of specific spiritual behaviors as an end in itself, a performance-based Christian perception, is to miss the greater reason for living the spiritual life.

The motivation and emphasis is wrong and falls short.

Contrary to what most of us have been taught, Christianity is not limited to salvation, obedience. service; prayer, bible reading, and bible study. There is something much more to it than those foundational building blocks even though they are good in themselves. Christianity has a defining key component that makes all the difference and gives the impetus for living a Christian life that is genuine, one with victory and power in its outworking in a satisfying, refreshing, and real way.

What we missed, and what has made all the difference to those whom have found it, is this:

Christianity is about a relationship.

Don't miss the boat. Discover authentic Christianity.

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More in the following post.

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LINKS:

>Next post: It starts with relationship: A Spiritual Intervention (5)

<Previous post: The old approach isn’t working: A Spiritual Intervention (3)

|<<First post: A Spiritual Intervention

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