This week I’m sharing a video and transcript looking at our relationship with God. I’d love your feedback on the format.
00:44 On today’s Mom Chat I’m introducing seven keys to lasting transformation. These key areas have come through my journey with God and what He has shown me to be transformational; what is it that has worked for me and made the transformation that He does stick instead of here and gone.
01:22 Those keys are:
- Key 1 Your relationship with God. I know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. God is my loving father and Holy Spirit as my ever present help and comfort.
- Key 2 is hearing God. I know God’s voice through his word and how he speaks to me personally. And that’ll be next week.
- Key 3, Identity. I clearly see and understand how God sees me.
- Key 4 is Integrity. Walking in alignment with how God sees me.
- Key 5 is calling. I know the impact I’m called to make an am faithfully obeying God’s directions to make that impact.
- Key 6 is self-awareness. I know myself, what I think, what I value, what I feel, what I need.
- Key 7 is hard things. I know how to partner with God and see him use hard things in my life for good.
Those are the seven keys. And today we’re going to talk about key number one.
02:24 Key number one is your relationship with God. Sometimes we can think, well, if I have asked Jesus to be my savior, then I have a relationship with God and I’m good and now I’m going to go about the rest of my life. Or even go about being a good Christian now. But I’m just realizing my relationship with God is so much more than that. Like, yes, I need to know Jesus as my Savior and Lord. He also calls me friend. He also says I’m no longer a servant and that there’s things He wants me to know. That’s a big deal.
03:40 There is a constant tension of remembering who He is and that He is Lord. He really should have the final say in my life. He also calls me friend and it’s not a dictatorship type lordship. He has the authority and the power, but He invites us to partner with it and He invites us and it’s our choice. He doesn’t force us to do anything. And that’s kind of where the friend piece comes in. Like you might have a friend that’s an expert in something you want to do. If it’s something dangerous like rock climbing or skydiving, you would be wise to submit to their leadership and do everything they say to do the way they say to do it. But they’re your friend. They’re not going to force you to go do this thing with them.
05:31 How well do we know the Father? Is He like the Santa Claus up there that’s keeping the list of Naughty & Nice. Is He like the Easter Bunny that brings good surprises when he feels like it. Maybe like the genie in the bottle that when we say the prayers just right and we do just the right things, then we get the answers. Or is He a loving father who speaks destiny and identity to us and disciplines us and trains us and the things that we need and is willing to have us suffer if that’s what it takes for us to learn His goodness or to learn our strength in Him.
06:28 How do you know Holy Spirit? I grew up with the Holy Spirit being an entity that was in the Bible and He did some really cool things in the New Testament and then I’m not really sure what happened. It says He lives in us. And so, you know, we can’t argue with scripture, but like just kind of ignore the rest of that stuff. What a joy to learn to know Him and to know what it means that He is a comforter, He is my counselor, He is the ever-present. You know power that resurrected Jesus from the dead that lives in me.
07:12 Do I know God that way? I’m learning especially the comforter and the counselor to partner with that all the time. He is here and He’s available and He wants to be known. He wants a relationship. We don’t have relationships without communication, without both people communicating, listening, and hearing. God created us for relationship in that way. So it seems pretty easy to me that He wants a similar kind of relationship.
07:55 What gets in the way of those relationships and why am I keep God at a distance? Why might He seem scary? Why might it not really trust what He tells me? What gets in the way? Why don’t we read scripture and see that it says you will do greater things than I did and just go, okay. Or you have every need supplied in Christ and go, well, good. I’m going to function like I have every need supplied. Why don’t we do that? We’ll talk more about that in other videos too.
08:40 We get wounded where we expected something to turn out a certain way and it doesn’t, and if we don’t realize that happened or if we don’t know how to get healing when that happens, then that can create a wounded spot where now our trust is broken or it hurts too much to go there. Or we even create a defense where we think we’re doing it right. We think that we’re listening and we’re hearing are that we’re walking in obedience and we just don’t even see it because we’ve created this defense there because that just hurts too much. And I don’t have any answers there.
09:24 Hard things happen to us. They don’t have to be huge hard things. It’s just crazy how well the enemy studies us and knows us and manipulates the people around us to say just the right thing that wounds us. Like it can be a tiny little comment about who do you think you are or why would you think you could do that? There might’ve been 100 positive things, but that one little negative just gets in because Satan studies us, he knows our destiny, he knows where we’re vulnerable. He’s been studying people for a long time. He knows what works to create a place where we don’t see God clearly or we don’t, well, I guess we don’t see Him clearly and therefore we don’t trust Him or believe.
10:31 Sometimes we’re believing a lie about Him and sometimes we’re believing a lie about ourselves. That affects our relationship because it’s hard to be friends with somebody who you tell them how wonderful they are and how much you appreciate them and the gifts that you see in them. And they’re just constantly telling you how miserable they are. That’s a hard relationship. That doesn’t go very far. Sometimes there’s not room in our relationship with God for what God thinks of us.
11:26 He’s faithful and He loves us anyway. He stays and He’ll keep telling us. But is that how we want our relationship to be?
12:34 When you think about God and how you relate to Him, what’s different between what you think, what you would say you believe, and how you act. As much as we want to say we believe something, the proof is in the behavior. Actions speak louder than words.
13:26 I guess especially for somebody that has trust issues, don’t tell me, don’t make your promises of good intentions. Prove it. We’re all flawed and sometimes I need to have more grace on stuff like that. James says you tell me about your faith, but I’m going to show you my faith by my actions. So, saying that we believe God will supply all of our needs is different than, well, I don’t want to say it’s different than if I say I believe God supplies all my needs according to his riches and glory.
14:13 Then to me, if I was perfectly applying that, which I am far from, then I would not worry about finances. I would not worry about time or energy or any other resource because he has supplied all my needs, all of them. And so then that keeps me on this continual journey of, okay, well I’m worrying about when we have to buy a new vehicle or I’m worrying about the debt that’s building up while we’re unemployed. That’s in disagreement with “God shall supply all my needs.” Do I believe this or not?
15:04 There’s so many areas that we have that challenge of “This is what He says and I believe it. I believe it, I believe it.” And then I find myself not believing it. I find myself acting in contradiction to that belief. The good news is that when we see that and we can work on it and we can get greater revelation of His truth and His perspectives so that we can become more aligned with what He says. One of my keys is living in that integrity of my actions and my words line up what I believe.
Have you thought about your relationship with the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit?
