How do you know when you are truly getting to know God and being transformed by Him? As you get to know God, you should experience a life change. Essentially, the proof that you are getting to know God more intimately and personally is that you are transformed both internally and externally. Thus, if you are not changing, you are not getting to know God. Rather, you have adopted a program, plan, thesis or theory instead of a personal pursuit of Him.
How do you feel when you set out to spend some time with someone you care about and they make it a point to say, “See this phone? I’m turning it off so that I can focus entirely on you and on us and on what we are doing right now.” That action no doubt causes you to feel cherished, valued and loved.
If you’ve ever been involved in sports, or if you follow sports at all, you will know that a regular question asked when a sports team is ready to head into competition is: how bad do you want it?
There are a variety of ways that people know God. Some people actually don’t know Him at all because they are unconverted and unsaved. But then there are those who know Him casually. They have more of an acquaintance type of relationship with Him. Still other people know God informationally. They can talk about Him fairly regularly and espouse their knowledge of Him. Then there are others who know Him spiritually. They can tell you how it feels when the Holy Spirit moves around or in them.
Sunday morning is often the most segregated time of the week because we adopted a mindset of tolerance. The goal of reconciliation is not tolerance or “putting up with” another race. Unfortunately, the church remains segregated most of the time because we only gather with other races when we have to. Much of what we call racial reconciliation among Christian circles is nothing more than watered-down sociology, sprinkled with a little bit of Jesus on top so we can call it biblical. But to break down the dividing walls of race w...