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The journey toward genuine spiritual transformation Potential: Moving Beyond Striving and Settling

The journey toward genuine spiritual transformation and abundant living begins with understanding and embracing two critical concepts: vulnerability and refusing to settle. True change is not achieved through performance or striving but by believing in the finished work of Jesus Christ and aligning your life with His sufficiency.

1. The Power of Vulnerability: The Starting Point for Change

Real change doesn’t start until you are willing to become vulnerable. This vulnerability is primarily internal and relational, leading to self-awareness and empowerment.

Vulnerability’s Three Layers:

1. With Yourself: The greatest change begins when you are open and honest with yourself.
2. With God: Secondly, you must be open and honest with God.
3. With Others: Finding someone to share your story with, as God leads you, strengthens both the person who hears it and the person who tells it. Telling your story can enlighten someone else’s path, potentially preventing them from failure or distress.

By walking through difficult experiences, you gain clarity on why you went through them, often seeing the situation clearer than a therapist or psychiatrist because you have walked through it.

2. Rejecting Complacency: The Danger of Settling

Settling and complacency are closely related. Complacency means being satisfied with your current location and believing you have no reason to go farther or do better. When you settle, you might be accepting less than what God intended for you—less than the place He prepared, wired you for, and allowed you to be born to do.

Settling is considered a very dangerous thing, akin to cancer or the deadliest disease on the planet, because you will never grow while being comfortable. Settling can also lead to forgetting who you are in Christ, distracting you from your true identity.

3. The Will of God: Believing in Jesus

The central truth of the Christian faith is that the will of God is believing on Jesus Christ. The Bible is clear: the only thing God wants you to do is believe in the one He sent.

Believing Jesus vs. Performing Works:

• Anti-Christ Mentality: Falling back into striving to perform to get God to act (“If I do this, then this will happen”) is identified as antichrist. This performance mentality is linked to an evil conscience, which constantly strives to perform to deserve what Jesus has already done.
• The Focus: Believing on Jesus means believing on everything that Jesus has done for us. God is looking for those who believe on His Son, Jesus Christ, who provides salvation, healing, deliverance, and all provisions.
• The Result of Unbelief: Unsaved people who perform acts (like prophesying) without believing in Jesus are considered “workers of iniquity” because they are not born again.

Belief must be in a person (Jesus Christ), not just a principle. The Church has often been guilty of preaching principles without the Person.

4. The Supernatural Life: Belief, Confession, and Rest

To move in the supernatural power of God, believers must move away from the effort of control and toward peaceful reliance on Jesus’s finished works.

Belief and Confession: The Engine of Manifestation

Faith is the process of believing in Jesus and then opening your mouth to confess what you believe in your heart.

• Heart First: You must load your heart first and be convinced in your heart first (the faith realm). Confessing belief in Jesus encompasses believing in all His finished works (righteousness, redemption, healing).
• Mouth as Trigger: Saying it is like pulling a trigger to a gun that is already loaded. The confession releases the truth from the faith realm into the physical realm, starting the process of manifestation.
• Rejecting Striving: Confessing something to try to make it happen is striving. You do not say it to see it; you say it because you believe it, and because you believe it, you will see it. Counting how many times you say something (e.g., “I’m healed 20 times”) is striving and controlling.

Resting in Sufficiency (Peace, Not Panic)

The things that are really close to God require believers to lose control and really trust Him.

• The Peace of Christ: Peace is the most important part. You must be totally peaceful and at rest, trusting in the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. This peace should take you through challenges without stress or anxiety.
• Godliness with Contentment: Contentment means not having the feeling or anxiety of lack, even when facing potential shortfalls (like a government shutdown or unpaid bills). Instead of panicking, you rest in the knowledge that “God got it, we’re good”.
• Letting Go of Control: Trying to control outcomes and strive to make things happen is one of the greatest enemies to the body of Christ. Believers must turn controls over to the administrator of the Holy Spirit.

5. Avoiding Obstacles: Offense and Comparison

Two major obstacles derail believers from the path of faith and peace: taking offense and competitive jealousy.

The Danger of Taking Offense:

Offense is taken, not given. When you take offense, you are essentially saying, “I don’t believe Jesus,” and you are impacting the will of God. Being upset about petty issues distracts from where God is trying to lead you. The will of God for you is far bigger than the “nothing thing” causing you distress.

Rejecting Competitive Jealousy:

Comparing yourself among others is dangerous and spiritually harmful.

• Numbers Don’t Equal Success: Allowing numbers (like church attendance, prayer time, or study time) to define success is a mistake. God does not require large numbers to accomplish His will and may deduct numbers just to show His greatness.
• Swelling vs. Growth: Be careful not to mistake a swelling (which takes place due to injury) for genuine growth.
• Focus on Your Assignment: You must snatch yourself away from any type of comparison and trust God that what He wants you to do does not need to be compared with someone else’s assignment.