Day 28: Living Daily in Reality: Man’s Praise or God’s?

Living daily in reality means that you have to first decide what
reality is. Is it that this earth has resulted from a mindless,
impersonal collision of atoms or that it was created by an intelligent
superior being. As we’ve studied the history of the man known as Jesus
of Nazareth, we’ve accepted that his father made the earth and made each
one of us as part of Him. We are here for Him to do through us what
his father wants done here on earth. Our fulfillment comes from
co-operating with his spirit inside us to bring this about.

When we ignore that we end up trying to get from the earth itself the
love that our maker has for us; so we try to shore up our low self-esteem
by drawing attention to ourselves in conversation or criticizing someone
else to make ourselves look good. Because we miss the reality that our
maker cares about us and watches over our lives we strive to get secure
jobs that will supply our needs, but we never seem able to establish a
permanent sense of security by this means. The result is our
personalities become corrupted by this slavish dependence of things and
other people until we find we can’t escape these strong selfish motives
and self-centered attitudes – even after we’ve begun to believe that
there is really a loving father who has made us in his son!

Our maker knew this would happen, so he has seen all this already in
his mind’s eye – before we ever appeared on the earth. He played the
whole thing through in the reality of eternity – bore all the pain and
death that we spread by our egocentric lives – bore it all in his son in
whom we were made – so that here on earth we could experience a new
start. That start begins when you see that this present world is the
world as it would have been if God had not destroyed it and remade it and
us in his son. That’s the only way we can be delivered from our
depraved enslavement to things and people and circumstances. Only God
himself can actualize here in time the changed “you” that exists now in
his son, Jesus Christ.

This occurs whenever you believe it and behave accordingly. For
instance, a problem situation develops in the office. One of your
fellow-workers gives your boss a wrong impression about you and there’s
just no way in which you can easily correct it. You see the effect of
it every day in the way your boss obviously thinks about you. As this
situation has hardened into permanence, your feeling about your job and
the office has changed. You don’t look forward to going to work any
more and your previous pleasant relationship with your boss has changed
so that you find yourself with suspicions and doubts that never bothered
you before. You’re read several “how to” books about changing your
attitudes, you’ve tried some of the little conversational pieces that
they recommend, but somehow your very own nature seems to be twisted out
of shape in regard to this one thing.

The basic flaw that holds this whole tangled web together is whose
opinion counts in your mind. Your boss didn’t make you and he probably
won’t be at your funeral – he certainly won’t be the first person you see
after you die! Only one person will fill these spots. The one who
made you – and he knew this whole thing would happen – just so that you
would see what your whole existence would be like if you cared more of
man’s opinion of you than his! This is the real issue – do you believe
your Maker made you – inside his own son – and that this son bore your
unbelief in God and your belief in man to death inside himself? Whenever
you start to see that and face honestly whether you will accept Christ’s
attitude to people’s opinion and concern only for his Father’s opinion –
then his spirit will make real in you the change that God brought about
in eternity.

If you are honestly willing to face reality then you’ll begin to live
in reality.