Real faith is not moved by what it sees, not by how it feels, not by what it looks like, but it is ONLY moved by the Word of God breathed by His Spirit.

“So all of us who have had that veil removed can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord—who is the Spirit—makes us more and more like Him as we are changed into His glorious image.” (2 Corinthians 3:18 NLT)

How we see ourselves play a vital role for us to live a victorious life that God called us to walk in.  Once we know that it is His will for us to live a life of victory, He graces us to walk in it.  He will never call us to this life of triumph without His help.  He promised, and “He Himself has said, I will not in any way fail you nor give you up nor leave you without support. [I will] not, [I will] not, [I will] not in any degree leave you helpless nor forsake nor let [you] down (relax My hold on you)! [Assuredly not!]” (Hebrews 13:5 AMPC)

God has given us this beautiful and powerful gift of free will and what He desires is for us to walk together, with our will fully yielded to His will, our will enthralled in His love.  He desires for us to be sensitive enough to hear His direction how to live an overcomer’s life.

The Holy Spirit is not to rule over us nor take the wheel from us.  He is there to lead us in the way that we should go and guide us with His loving eye.

“I hear the Lord saying, “I will stay close to you,
instructing and guiding you along the pathway for your life.
I will advise you along the way
and lead you forth with My eyes as your guide.
So don’t make it difficult; don’t be stubborn
when I take you where you’ve not been before.
Don’t make me tug you and pull you along.
JUST COME WITH ME!”  (Psalm 32:8 TPT)

Jesus is our Good Shepherd and we shall not want.  He makes us to lie down in green pastures; He LEADS us beside the still waters.  He restores our souls; He LEADS us in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake. (Psalm 23:1-3)  He leads and we follow for His sheep hears and knows His voice.

In the book of beginnings, Genesis, “God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:27-28)  Therefore, He entrusted His creation to man, but never independent from Him.  He is with us always, richly present in all of our moments and movements.  We are ever connected to Him and can never be separated from Him and His love.  

This is where we are to be fully persuaded of our heavenly identity in Christ to be able to walk the walk that He called us to walk.   He called us to co-labor with Him to subdue and take dominion over His creation; and to fill the earth with the knowledge of His glory and goodness as the waters cover the sea.  To do this is for us to have our thought life renewed according to His Word.  We are to have an internal image of who we are in Christ as a result of meditating His Word.

“This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall MEDITATE in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” (Joshua 1:8)

To meditate is to utter, to mutter, to imagine and to speak.  It is never meant to empty one’s mind for an empty mind is the playground of the enemy.  Why will the enemy  fight for our minds unless he knows that this is where we WIN?  “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he”  (Proverbs 23:7).  When we think we are victorious because Jesus came and won everything for us, we will walk in victory. 

Lately, someone asked me this common question, “Why is it that there are times I cannot help feeling so alone in spite of knowing that He is with always with us?”  My response was, “It really happens at times.  If we do not feel His presence, we bank on the promise of His Word BY FAITH that He is with us always. If we persist, our feelings will eventually fall in line with our faith.

Faith goes beyond the obvious.  It is to be rooted and grounded on what the Word of God says, “I AM with you always.” (Matthew 28:20), regardless of how we feel and what we see.  His Word is to be our ultimate reality and authority.  “Faith is the confirmation of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality, PERCEIVING AS REAL FACT what is not revealed to the senses.” (Hebrews 11:1 AMP)  We go by faith and not by sight.

Instead of dwelling in how alone we feel, we GET UP, speak, utter, mutter and declare His promise that He is with us always until it affects and influences our thoughts.  His  Word says, “Not one promise of God is empty of power.” (Luke 1:27 TPT)  This is when we train and tune ourselves to the superior reality of His spoken word and adjust ourselves to it.  This is when we trust the Lord with all our heart and LEAN NOT ON OUR OWN UNDERSTANDING.  We may not know how meditation technically works in our minds, but surely He knows its awesome benefits because He told us to do so.  He is the ALL-KNOWING GOD Who knows it all.  He knows the end from the beginning.

“Trust in the Lord completely,
and do not rely on your own opinions.
With all your heart rely on Him to guide you,
and He will lead you in every decision you make.
Become intimate with Him in whatever you do,
and He will lead you wherever you go.”  (Proverbs 3:5-6 TPT)

I love the Message Paraphrase of this verses …

“Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
    He’s the one who will keep you on track.
Don’t assume that you know it all.”

Obedience to His Word is always perceived to do the action on what it tells us to do.  But obedience to His Word also means to believe what He has written to us and about us.

If He says, “I Am with you always.”, to obey it is to believe and walk in this truth regardless of how we feel. Faith sees His presence with us.

If He says, “By the stripes of Jesus, we are healed.” to obey is to believe and submit to what He has spoken regardless of what we feel and what the reports say.  I am not saying do not take medications. NO!  I am saying that His Word has to have the final authority in our lives. Faith sees us healthy and strong because His Word says so and it brings health to our flesh and strength to our bones.

If He says, “He provides for us according to His riches in glory”, to obey is to rest in what He promised in spite what we see in our bank accounts.  Faith sees the impossiblity becoming a possibility. Before we know it, provision has come.

If He says, “He is our Good Shepherd.”, to obey is to allow Him to lead us the way and His ways and thoughts are in His Word. The more we meditate His Word, the more we fine tune ourselves into His leading. A deep knowing will be developed within us that gives us the confidence to go where He leads us to go and do what He leads us to do. It gives us the assurance that because He is our Good Shepherd, He will always lead us to something good and glorious.

If He says, “He is our ever present help in time of need.”, to obey is trust Him that help is always on the way. Jesus is our Savior and He saves. Whatever need we have, He is. His very presence has it all. When we know that He dwells in us in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, we have it all, for in Him all things consist.

When hope, joy and peace are absent, this only means one thing, that we are believing or perceiving something that is contrary to His Word.  It is then a lie, for the Word of God is the TRUTH and our KNOWLEDGE of the TRUTH is what sets us free.  To force out our wrong thinking is to fill our thoughts with the right ones.  We unplug ourselves from feeding what does not belong to us and plug ourselves to hearing and hearing the Words of Christ where faith comes.  What we keep hearing renews our minds and a renewed mind transforms our lives.

The world has its own ways of thinking and doing things.  But His Word says, “Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in His eyes.” (Romans 12:2 TPT)

Our lives are meant to mirror what we look like in the Word of God, thus, the importance of knowing who we are in Christ is of utmost necessity.  We are to be willing to fight the tide, to fight a good fight of faith that we get to see ourselves conformed into the image and likeness of Who He is.  We are to demolish every pretension, any thought, opinion or judgment set by this world that is against who God called us to be.

We have been given the powerful weapon of His Word breathed by the Holy Spirit that is mighty in which the whole world trembles in submission to.   We have the living Word of God, which is full of energy, and it pierces more sharply than a two-edged sword. It will even penetrate to the very core of our being where soul and spirit, bone  and marrow meet! It interprets and reveals the true thoughts and secret motives of our hearts.  He gave us His Word that He honors above His Name and is the same yesterday, today and forever.  His Word was revealed to us that whatever things that we think highly of that is not congruent to what He says be pulled down and be taken captive into the obedience of Christ.

 ^“For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-5 NIV)

The internal image of our divine identity in Christ as a result of meditating the Word of God is to be our ultimate reality.  When we know who we are in Him, our lives will reflect Him to this aching world as we co-labor with Him to bring hope in the midst of hopelessness.  How we see ourselves in His Word is to be mirrored before the eyes of those who are around us that He desires to touch and make a difference.  We are His sons and daughters taking up our rightful place as diffusers of His love that heals, provides, restores, preserves, prospers and saves.

“The entire universe is standing on tiptoe, yearning to see the unveiling of God’s glorious sons and daughters!  For against its will the universe itself has had to endure the empty futility resulting from the consequences of human sin. But now, with eager expectation, all creation longs for freedom from its slavery to decay and to experience with us the wonderful freedom coming to God’s children.”  (Romans 8:19-21 TPT)

Every time I come across the word “REFLECTION”, I always remember the movie “Mulan”.  The lyrics denote questions of her identity, who she saw before the still waters, with these words,”When will my reflection show who I am inside?”

Hmmm … when we are fully persuaded by who God says we are, I believe, whether the water is still or rough, we can confidently see our reflection according to His Word, not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God.  It may be easy to see such reflection when things are smooth, but when waves and winds violently stir the waters, then we go BY FAITH that we are who God says we are.

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, thank You for Your love, mercy and grace that You gave us Your only beloved and begotten Son Jesus, Who is the Word made flesh and dwelt among us.  Thank You, Jesus, for Your finished work that we may have and enjoy a victorious, an overcomer’s and a more than a conqueror’s life.  You won it all and made it possible for us.  Thank You, Holy Spirit, for leading us into all truth and revealing to us what it means to be obedient to the spoken word of God.  As You pour into our hearts the love of our Father, we respond to Your love in obedience, knowing that Your Word was sent to save us, prosper us, heal us, strengthen us, comfort us and guide us, filing our hearts with love, joy and peace that surpass all understanding.  Thank You for unveiling our eyes to see who we are in Christ, reflecting Your Word in our lives and who we shall be to the world.  Thank You that we are BLESSED to be a BLESSING in Jesus’ Name. Amen!

Photo Credits: Erik Quianzon