The Real

My experience is not what makes redemption real— redemption is reality. Redemption has no real meaning for me until it is worked out through my conscious life. When I am born again, the Spirit of God takes me beyond myself and my experiences, and identifies me with Jesus Christ. If I am left only with my personal experiences, I am left with something not produced by redemption. But experiences produced by redemption prove themselves by leading me beyond myself, to the point of no longer paying any attention to experiences as the basis of reality. Only to the Reality which produces the experiences. My experiences are not worth anything unless they keep me at the Source of truth— Jesus Christ. –My Utmost For His Highest - Dec. 21, 2009

In C.S. Lewis’ novel, The Great Divorce visitors from hell visit Heaven and find that it is too real for them. The grass of the heavenly plains pierce their feet and the light of the heavenly sun tears at them. It is not that they have somehow become less real, that they are now ghost. But rather, it is that heaven (the presence of God) is far more real than anything we know.

I often feel that God isn’t real enough in my life. I cry out to God to be more real in my life. What I seem to forget is that God is already real, without me asking He is already more real than anything in my life. Yet, on a daily basis I choose to ignore the reality and focus on the temporal. I weigh myself down with relative illusions when real freedom is offered to me.

It’s the child who, whilst playing in the mud, finds that his mud pies have been destroyed. Ignoring the knowledge that he has real food waiting for him at home. Or a more modern analogy, the child who is sad that his game character has lost the battle when he has his own true life yet to live. All this a hundred fold of course.

To know what is real, that is the source of true freedom.