Category: Interior Life

Are You Looking Forward To Being Glorified?

Posted on by

How much do we reflect on the idea that the people of God will have the glory of God? Revelation 21:11 promises that in the coming New Heaven and New Earth believers will have “the glory of God”. But this promise is not confined to Revelation ‒ it is a major New Testament theme. In a previous post we looked at the future luminosity of the body of Christ which is one dimension of God’s glorification of his people. Now we will consider what the New Testament says about this glorification in general. Warning: this is a very encouraging subject! It is surprising how often scripture speaks of the glorification of believers. Apparently this is an important truth for believers to keep in mind. Some of the mentions of this theme in the New Testament include: • In John 17:22 Jesus states in prayer that “The glory that you have Continue Reading →

How Shame and Self-Rejection Affect Us

Posted on by

Shame can be described as a sense of embarrassment, dishonor, disgrace or inadequacy. These feelings come from something you did or thought that contradicts what you believe to be good or valuable (this is essentially guilt which is a precursor to shame). Just the fact that we fall short of our own standards of good produces shame in all of us. We want to hide our weakness from others because we want them to value us. This is why it is normal for people to display their best self to others, which probably helps society stay civilized. But we also naturally display a false self in many situations, which keeps us from truly connecting with others. We use our false self to cover up our shame, for example, pretending that we have our life all together when actually we are broken or struggling. It takes time, but we need to Continue Reading →

Focusing on Our Final Destiny in the New Creation

Posted on by

In the book of Genesis we hear of the tragic beginning of humans. How they lost their union with their Creator and lost harmonious community with fellow humans. But in the New Testament we hear a happy ending. All our prayers, and suffering, and trusting, and sacrifice finally bring us to our eternal destiny. God wins over sin and evil. After death He will give us new bodies and new souls that can receive all He has for us. And his followers will enjoy living with Him forever. This is a key foundation of spiritual theology and spiritual formation. In Revelation we learn that God restores all that was lost in the fall. The Bible begins with a Garden of Paradise that humans must leave because of their sin. But in the end, God cleanses our sin completely and permanently, and restores us to a paradise in a Garden that Continue Reading →

Realizing That Sometimes We Are Unbelieving Believers

Posted on by

One of the biggest challenges in our Christian life is to actually believe what God says. We read many wonderful and mysterious truths in God’s Word, and we tell ourselves that we believe them, but often our heart does not really believe. He wants us to believe what He says so that he can change us and make us one with Him. If we don’t believe the spiritual truths He is trying to teach us, then his river of life can’t flow freely through us. Unbelief places a dam on his river of life. But knowing this problem still doesn’t purge our unbelief. He says that He loves us, but often we wonder. He says He is always with us, but we so easily believe that He is off in the distance. So we will find as we follow Jesus that we are partially “unbelieving believers”. But He does not Continue Reading →

Going Deeper With Repentance – Why can’t we change better?

Posted on by

As we progress in the Christian life, we begin to notice certain sinful areas of our life that we can’t seem to conquer. We all have our own weaknesses and no matter how hard we try, we continue to fail. We may be able to control our surface behavior, but inside we still feel the impulse to sin. Earlier in our Christian life, we were able to overcome many of our sins just by actively resisting temptation and receiving God’s strength through the five channels of growth. But now we are starting to realize that our sins are powered by deep desires, attitudes, and beliefs that we can’t control or change. And our own special areas of weakness are constantly reminding us of this. They are like a spotlight on our old nature. Rejoice! Now we are discovering the end of ourself. We have come to the end of the Continue Reading →