For God is Spirit and So Am I

A curious thought just dawned on me. In John 4:24 Jesus tells us that God is spirit. This is not a disputable truth. Few if any would argue otherwise, but what if we were to contemplate the fact that we too are spirit? And begin to grasp the gravity of that truth?

We know that God has created us in His own image (Latin as Imago Dei), as stated in Genesis 1:26, but do we know what the bulk of that image is comprised of? Since most of what we “see” as images in this world are visible, we tend to presume upon God’s words; that image must be something one can see. And that’s not completely true; far from it.

Oh granted, because we live in a visible, material world, we most often associate visibility with tangible things that can be touched, seen, tasted, heard, or even smelled, but that IS NOT the kind of image God is referring to, on the contrary. God has made us in His image, first and foremost as SPIRIT. Not flesh.

The irony of it all is that we seek to build in the visible world, things that we assume are important to the invisible world, and often we are just plain wrong. Albeit our motives may be pure, our methods often fail to build where most of our reality is; on the inside.

For most of us, we would openly agree with what is being proposed, but deep inside, there may be conflict, because our interface with the spirit world is buried beneath several inches of flesh and bone. So for someone to build or enhance the inner man, one may not see immediate changes on the outside, and thereby rush headlong into further external efforts to bring about external changes. Does that make sense?

Let me ask you this: How do you know an internal affect has occurred, if the externals have little change? Or is it even possible for one’s spirit to be changed, and our flesh not to follow suit?

I ask that, because after many years of ministry and personal discipleship, I believe we have developed many quaint and fancy ways of altering the external, all the while ignoring the internal, because our marketing or business plan seems to be making a visible difference or change. So who could argue with our methods, right?

Yet all the while we debate our means and methods, the bigger question of SPIRIT goes unaddressed. Oh you may disagree with me, but what are the quantitative things we use to determine if something is successful in the ministry or not; visible stuff. Numbers of people, numbers of dollars, numbers of buildings or square footage; and on and on the ticker counts as to ones success in life and ministry. And rightly so, who could argue with progress in a visible sense.

But let me ask this question: How do you measure the strength and health of your spirit man? Or do you presume that that component of your existence is 100% in tacked and never in need of expansion or enhancement?

Just wondering how you view the Imago Dei when you look in the mirror and when you look all around you?