Your body was designed for maximum health and productivity, yet when your body is out of alignment, it causes you pain, slows you down and consumes your thoughts and emotions. When you are out of alignment you just cannot function optimally. What is true for the natural body is also true for your spirit. In many ways, the physical is a shadow of the spiritual. Romans 8: 27-30 teaches that God’s predetermined purpose for everyone who loves the LORD Jesus Christ is that they be transformed into the image of Christ. God wants to mature, stretch and strengthen your spiritual life to make an impact for His Kingdom in this world. The desire of Jesus is that His followers be His ambassadors on the earth and effect it as salt and light (2 Corinthians 5:20; Matthew 5: 13-16). That is God’s purpose for you However, you can easily get your spiritual life out of alignment with God’s purpose and find yourself ineffective and dredging through your journey.
So what can knock us out of spiritual alignment? The obvious answer is Sin. Let’s be honest, sin in your life will most definitely force you out of alignment with God’s purposes, but not just your sin. The sinful choices of others can have dire effects on your as well. Add to both of those issues the fact that you also live in a world reeling from the effects of sin. You live in a fallen world. The year 2020 has derailed many souls with the anger, pain and confusion brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic, social unrest, acts of hatred and political chaos. Many people were drawn into the circus of confusion and fear and lost focus on faith in God, loving their enemies and shining the light of Christ in the darkness.
This all began back in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 2: 16-17, (God to Adam) “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”
Now, there are those who question why God would allow for one tree to be in the garden that was forbidden for Adam and Eve to eat. Was God setting the first couple up for failure? I don’t think so. God is love, but for love to be love, one must be given the right to choose to receive and reciprocate that love back. God gave Adam and Eve the right to choose. They were instructed on right and wrong and warned of the consequences and then the choice was theirs to make. The same is true for you. God isn’t looking for heartless robots. He is looking for men and women who desire to have a relationship with Him. He wants you to have a relationship with Him. That is what makes all the difference!
1 John 4: 16 says, “ And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.”
This is why God sent His Son, The LORD JESUS. Just as the effects of sin will knock you out of alignment, Jesus was sent from the Father to offer Realignment!
Look at the great promise in Romans 5: 17,
“If by the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the overflow of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
The first two steps in realigning your life with the purposes of God are to:
- Recognize that you are out of alignment.
and
- Go to Jesus and yield to Him for the realignment process to begin.
Often our lives don’t get out of alignment with God and His purposes overnight, but from a series of events, encounters or poor choices. So be patient. The realignment process may take some time and force you to deal with matters in your life that you don’t really want to face. However, there is no more joyful and fulfilling place to be then in alignment with God. Hang in there and let God do His work!
On our next post we will look at our steps in yielding to Christ for the realignment process.
Pursuing Truth with Chris Vaught 