Asleep or Awake?

Being a man of God is more than just behaving in a good way. Anyone can do good. But being a man of God, being a true man – as we like to say at True Men Ministries – is more than just doing, it is being. To be someone is to live from the inside out. Not everybody does that. In fact, I think most people don’t live this way – which is to say they are not really living at all.

Patricia – played by Meg Ryan in Joe vs. the Volcano, says that her father says “that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”

In my experience this is most certainly true. The people that I pass everyday driving to work, standing in line at Starbucks, walking up and down the aisles at the grocery store – they seem asleep. They certainly don’t seem happy, much less alive at all. Don’t they know that they are created in the image of the living God? That makes all the difference in the world – knowing that we are created in the image of the living God, believing that fact in our hearts and letting it seep out through our eyes, our mouths, our fingers and toes!

Genesis 1:27 tells us that we are created in the image of God, male and female. If we connect this to Philippians 2:6 which tells us the Christ is the very nature of God (is actually God) and Matthew 16 where Peter confesses that he believes Jesus to be the Son of the Living God (and Jesus confirms this confession as true), then we see that Christ is the ultimate man in the image of God.

But let’s take this one step further, and take it home to our hearts. Galatians 2:20 tells us that Christ lives in us. So we were not only originally created in the image of God, but we now have the image of God in us through Christ living in us. And Christ is alive. He died on the cross in order to forgive all our sins and defeat death and the devil. And He rose again from the dead on the third day. He now lives in us while He rules over the universe as God’s “right hand man.”

You can be alive. You can live. You do not have to be one of those who are, as Patricia’s father says, asleep. You can live in a state of constant total amazement – for this is truly living. How can you do this? Touch the hand of a small child. Look into the eyes of your wife or husband. Stroke the back of your cat or dog. Listen to the rain fall. Walk at dusk on a snowy day. Spend a half-hour watching the surf roll in. Walk down a city street and smile at each person you pass. Sing a song in the shower.

Do ordinary things that will never be ordinary again because Christ is living you. You bear the image of the living God through Jesus! Life will never be the same again.

From Man of God: Finding Purpose in an Uncertain World

©2009 True Men Ministries.