Thought For Today - September 16
  Is God Real to You?
 By: Robert A Searles

    Is God real in your life? What,  or who do you really think God is? Is God an intricate part of you as an individual? Is God as much a part of you as your breathing, or your heartbeat , or your walking and moving about? Is God just an ideal; a good idea? Is God just a philosophy of life that we pick from a book? Is God just a psychological means of control to keep us from doing immoral things? Is God just a good thought that we think about for a few moments each day, and then close the book and put it on the shelf for another day, or until something bad or unpleasant happens to us for which we have no answer, and we recognize that we need wisdom beyond ourselves? What and who is God to you as an individual?

God's word teaches us that God is a spirit, a supernatural invisible spirit. They that worship God must worship him in spirit. God's word teaches us that the supernatural invisible spirit of God manifested himself in the person and body of Jesus of Nazareth while he was on earth. Jesus ascended into heaven after his resurrection, and sent the Holy Spirit to literally live in our bodies. If we choose and desire to have it so, God the Holy Spirit will clean our house and literally , as a matter of fact, actually take up residence in our bodies. At this point it is God himself living in us to will and to do of his good pleasure. If we choose to have it so, it will be God himself in us creating our wants and desires, and it will be God himself in us controlling our thoughts and the very movements of our bodies. 

If God is really living in us, we don't really have to set up a lot of rules and regulations for ourselves, because it will be God himself that will be in control. We have to grasp the principle that we were made and designed to be the house and temple of God, the place where God lives, and walks, and has his being. Of course, before God can live in us, we must be changed, we must be born again through faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we must willingly yield ourselves and open the door so that the Holy Spirit can move in and take charge.

    Where do you go for counsel? Do you look to people, someone whom you admire for their great intellectual capacities, or do you look within yourselves, to the Holy Spirit of God who dwells and lives in each one of his born again children? 

 
 "Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me; and that covereth with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin; that walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the shadow of Egypt." Isaiah 30: 1,2.

    Did it ever occur to you that if you look to a person for counsel, even though that person may be a child of God, and even though that person may be much admired for his outward appearance and apparent service to the Lord, he may not be completely yielded himself to the spirit of God, and so be limited as to the wisdom he has from God? God wants us to look to no person for counsel. He wants us to come directly to the throne of grace.

    Do we pitch our tents, as Lot did, so that we can look toward Sodom? Have we separated ourselves unto God, just enough, so that if we wanted to, it would not be too difficult to take a walk down into Egypt, as it were, which is typical of the world of sin and bondage from which we came. Are we prone to trust in the shadow of Egypt? Do we say that we love and trust God, but after all when we get hungry we must run after the things of the world to get satisfied?

    When we trust in men, and in the world system, and have no real vital relationship with the living God who wants to live and walk and abide in us, then no wonder we have no power, and are frustrated and confused/

 "Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion." Isaiah 30: 3.

Telehelp Publications Christian Literature Ministry