100% Devoted to GodI am a fourth degree black belt in karate and have been training as a martial artist for a good number of years. When examining martial arts instruction you will see that there are actually quite a number of different styles and each one has its own unique training methods.
A training technique that is very prominent in virtually every style, though, is a practice called kata training. A kata is, essentially, a practice fight without a partner. It is a scripted series of blocks, punches and kicks that an individual practices over and over again in order to gain mastery of the various martial techniques.
There is tremendous value in practicing katas as it helps a person become more skillful performing the various techniques. There is one thing, though, that it will not do. It will not, by itself, make you a great fighter.
In a kata, the opponent is imaginary. In a real fight, the opponent is real. In a kata, there is no variation in the techniques. In a real fight, you have no idea what your opponent will do. In a kata, you are practicing scripted moves. In a real fight, the opponent is creative and very well may use different moves. Kata training is valuable in helping to develop good technique, but it will not make you a good fighter. To become a good fighter, you have to fight.
Just as an imaginary opponent will not make you a good fighter, believing in an imaginary God will not produce an individual who is completely devoted to God. Before you get too confident, though, that your conception of God is real, let’s consider what this really means. There are two ways that a person can understand the reality of God.
The first approach is to understand it intellectually. A person can work through all of the philosophical arguments about why a case against the existence of God is not compelling and why the argument for God is strong. Based on those arguments, one can then come to the conclusion that there positively is a God. This kind of approach is certainly important and can form a strong foundation for an individual’s faith.
But an intellectual approach is not enough to compel a person to live out their faith in daily life. It is not at all uncommon for people to have an intellectual belief about God, yet the life that they live not express the values that go along with that belief. There is another facet to belief that must also be put into place.
This second approach relates to experiential belief. Not only do we believe in God as an intellectual construct, but we experience him in relationship as an actual person. No person ever gives themselves fully to a mere idea. We do, though, give ourselves to people we care about and believe in.
Unfortunately, too many Christians have lost, or have never known, a sense of the objective reality of God. They know him as a concept rather than as a real person. As a result, they don’t experientially interact with him as if he were a real person. To generate an inner compulsion to live a holy life, it is necessary to know God as a real person who expresses himself according to the characteristics that are revealed in the Bible.
Here is the big problem that we have to deal with. God is spirit. As human beings, our essence is also spirit. The difference is, our spirit is housed in a physical body whereas God is not confined that way. As we live life and interact with the world, the most obvious and visible aspect of that interaction is physical.
That being said, we need to take a moment and understand that even in our physical interaction with other humans, the essence of that interplay is still spiritual. It is easy to overlook that fact since we have the sensory interaction. But our self-conscious communication and interaction is a spiritual process that is manifested as we express ideas and convey love.
While there is not a physical body to interact with, the essence of our interaction with God is exactly the same as with another human being. To experience and understand the spiritual part of an interaction with God, we have to quiet our mind and body in a way that allows us to discern the spiritual communication from the spiritual plane. In our modern world of fast paced lives and image driven media, that can be very difficult. Difficult though it may be, it is certainly possible because that is the essence of our nature. We are created in the image of God so we are capable of interacting on a spiritual level.
There is another problem that many people also struggle with as it relates to communicating with God. Because of the prominence of Naturalistic beliefs in our society, the tendency is for things physical to be seen as “real” and for spiritual things to be conceived of as “not so real.” That is a completely false understanding of reality. What we learn from God’s revelation is that spirit is real and eternal while the physical is real and temporal. Physical reality actually derives its origin from the spiritual. In other words, spirit is even more real than physical. God is not some nebulous “something” that is wafting around in a foggy spiritual dimension. He is a real objective person who is with us in our lives. Our conception cannot be that we make up God to be a person because we are persons. On the contrary, we are persons because God is a person and he created us in his image.
So, back to our original thought. You want to be a person who is able to be one hundred percent devoted to God? Then you are going to have to begin interacting with him based on who he really is – a real objective person that you know and love. If God is nebulous to you (that is, not objectively real like people who have physical bodies), then you won’t be able to muster any real love and devotion. We are only able to express love and devotion to that which is real to us.
As a starting place, it will be necessary to spend time in scripture so that your understanding of who God is and what he is like corresponds to his actual personhood. The Bible is the place where he has reveled himself to us concerning who he is and what he is like. Knowledge of scripture will give us the intellectual foundation upon which to establish a true relationship.
Once we have that, we need to take the next step. We need to learn how to experience God’s actual presence. We need to learn how to quiet our body and mind so that we can hear the still small voice of God and understand it as an actual communication from him to us – Spirit to spirit. We must experience his presence as the presence of an actual person that we can interact with, then discipline our lives to weed out the impurities that keep us from being able to live in the presence of a holy God. And once we grasp the disciplines, we need to actually spend time experiencing what that presence is like.
One hundred percent devotion to God is reserved for those who are willing to discipline themselves to walk in the realm of the spirit and conform to the expectations that God has laid out. And those who do will enter into an understanding of reality that most people will never know.
© 2006 Freddy Davis
Freddy Davis is the Executive Director of MarketFaith Ministries; an equipping ministry designed to help Christians become more effective in their faith life using worldview principles. Free worldview resources and contact information for MarketFaith Ministries can be found at http://www.marketfaith.org. Also, feel free to sign up for our free e-zine, Worldview Made Practical.
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