Experiencing Continual Spiritual Awakening

 Today’s episode is about how to experience a daily, continual spiritual awakening.

We sometimes use the term “spiritual awakening” to refer to historical moments in our culture in which a large number of people experienced Spirit-led revival and renewal. Or we use the phrase to describe a single moment of salvation, baptism, or rededication. But then it’s over.

But spiritual awakening can be more than a moment; it can be a lifestyle. And it can be more than a personal, individual experience with God in mystical terms. Spiritual awakening can be a process whereby, over time, we leave behind the old life, the old us, and the old nature and put on the life of Christ instead.

Spiritual awakening is more than a one-time occurrence – it’s a daily lifestyle.

1. Move away from darkness.

Many of us grew up in movements that sought to define darkness in terms of certain practices, but darkness is more intimate than that. We’ve experienced seasons in which we weren’t outwardly doing anything that would be deemed sinful behavior by others, but we knew deep down we were in an unhealthy, unholy place.

This darkness of rebellion is what we must leave behind if we are to experience true awakening. We can’t remain in places of anger, selfishness, and deception if we are going to experience the fullness of God at work in our lives.

1. Living in reaction to my pain.
2. Living in protection of myself.
3. Living in opposition to God.
4. Living in resentment toward people.
5. Living in regret over my past.

2. Walk in the light of Christ

1. Living in light of the cross.
2. Living in light of the resurrection.
3. Living in light of grace.
4. Living in light of my new identity.
5. Living in light of love.

I'd be really happy and thankful if you consider sharing this episode with somebody that might need to hear it, especially maybe a young person in your life who's sort of forming their views and values as they march forward. And if you believe in this work, if you appreciate what I have to say and you want to support the podcast and all the other writing that I do, just visit www.walkhumble.com/support. Okay, you can drop a small one-time gift or become a monthly supporter. Either way, I'm just glad you're here. I want us to make progress. But I want us to do without all the pretense I hope we can walk humble. Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript

Experiencing Continual Spiritual Awakening

Hello, welcome to Walk Humble. I'm your host, Brandon Cox. And this is an ongoing conversation I host about life, faith and relationships among people who don't claim to have life all figured out. We want to walk forward and grow and be wholly healthy and happy. But we want to do so in a way in which we walk humble, meaning we drop the pretense, take off the mask, and realize we have nothing left to prove. 

Today, I want to talk to you about what it means to have a spiritual awakening. And I'm not talking about a one-time experience. 

For a lot of us the phrase spiritual awakening, it either refers to a historical moment, such as the first Great Awakening or the Second Great Awakening in American history that we studied in school. Or it refers to a moment in our lives when we felt particularly spiritually moved in some way. Maybe you were a kid and you got baptized, or you were at a revival service, or a church camp or vacation Bible school. And the pastor or priest said or did something, and you just felt overwhelmed. And you made a decision in that moment to move toward God in some significant way. And it's a spiritual awakening. 

But now the awakening is over. And that's the problem, isn't it? This idea of spiritual awakening for most of us, it's a one-time thing. It's a one-time shot. It's something we gave a chance to. And when we walk through hard times we look back on and we think, Man, I'd love to feel that way again, but I don't think I can. I don't know that I'll ever recapture that. Again. That was my spiritual awakening. And today, I just need to figure out how to trudge through life one day after another after another. 

Well, I want to talk to you today about how to live in a state of continual spiritual awakening. And I want to give you just two keys for doing so. Okay. How do you live in a state of continual spiritual awakening? In other words, how do you become more and more aware, every day of the idea, the plan, the purpose that God has for your life, that is beyond just your sort of natural existence, your normal day to day life, something that is deeper, something that is broader, something that makes a difference in who you are in an ongoing way? How do you do that? How do you live in a state of continual spiritual awakening? 

Well, in the New Testament and the Christian scriptures, Jesus and the Apostle Paul both talk about being born again, or becoming a new person, leaving the old person behind and becoming something new. And I want to zero in on that for a second because to me, there are two keys to living in a state of spiritual awakening every day, where you get up in the morning and you are able to become aware of the goodness and the presence of God around you and within you. And where you become better, you become more on target when it comes to God's purposes for your life. Okay, the two keys are simply these, I'll go through them one at a time. 

First key is this, move away from darkness, move away from darkness. That's a theme in the New Testament, to say goodbye to the darkness to move away from the old me from who I used to be. When I walked around in tendencies of sin and guilt and shame. When I lived in a state of darkness and spiritual hiding, when I sort of put on the mask of my own ego, when I faked it, in order to get through another day of life, that to me is darkness. 

Now for a lot of us, we grew up in movements that sought to define darkness in terms of certain practices, right so I don't drink or cuss or smoke or true or run around with those who do I stay away from darkness. The problem is those practices aren't really what darkness is all about. Darkness is where I begin to walk. When I choose to remain in the version of me that is unenlightened. unconverted, undelivered unsaved, and regenerated when I continue to live in the version of me, that has not awaken to the presence and reality and the truth of God. Okay. 

So if I want to live in a state of spiritual enlightenment, and a state of spiritual awakening, that means I first need to move away from darkness. I need to move away from the natural mean the me who was before God, the me who was just trying to survive, the me who was trying to cover the me who was trying my best trying to work my way through trying to earn my worth and my value, trying to please everybody around me trying to fake it and put on the mask, to protect myself to oppose God to to resent people to regret my past to blame everyone else for my problems, to react to my pain in such a way that I allow my pain to come to define me. All of that has to do with the life of darkness. Now I've walked through seasons of darkness in my life. And I can remember going through this as a kid, as a teenager as a young adult as an older adult. I've gone through this in the last decade of my life, the seasons in which I revert back to kind of this instinctual survivalist way of living, where I just want to avoid pain. I want to avoid challenge, I want to avoid the hard things of life I don't have capacity to, to love and to show empathy because I'm so focused on my own issues, my own my own stuff, if you will. And all of that is darkness. 

I think of it as my darkness is my rebellion. My darkness is my choice toward loneliness. My darkness is when I am being self-protective in such a way that I don't become vulnerable. Instead, I cover instead I fake it. Instead, I find ways to counterfeit my way to joy and happiness instead of authentically getting there. So if you want to live in a state of spiritual awakening, there is this. 

The New Testament describes it a lot of terms like dying to self, okay, carrying your cross picking up your cross and denying yourself and following Jesus. Instead, it's looking at my nature and declaring that I am dead to the old way of living the unenlightened, unchanged, unregenerate, unsaved way of living, I'm going to move away from darkness. 

And so day to day, the way that looks is when I feel myself slipping into patterns that resemble the me who was living under darkness, I'm going to run from that I'm going to reject that I'm going to move away from that I'm going to flee from that as fast as I possibly can, okay, I'm not going to live in reaction to my pain anymore. I'm not going to live in protection of myself in opposition to God and resentment toward people. And in regret over on past anymore, I'm going to walk instead in a state in a condition of continual spiritual awakening, by moving away from darkness. 

And number two, and if this hasn't dawned on you, yet, it might be pretty obvious, I'm going to move toward the light, I'm going to walk in the light of Christ.
Okay. 

The New Testament talks about walking in the light as He is in the light that we're described as becoming new creatures as saying goodbye to the old us to saying goodbye to the old who we were and who we used to be in our unforgiveness and our sinful tendencies and our guilt and our shame and our, our tendency to cover and protect and to fake it and to hide, and instead walk in the light to walk in exposure to walk and vulnerability, to walk in faith, to believe and to trust that God is there and that he's able and that he's capable, and that that I can, I can live into him and love him. I'm going to live in the light of Christ. Okay, so I'm going to move away from darkness. And in terms of spiritual awakening, I'm going to walk in the light of Christ. 

Let me give you some example of what that means to walk in the light of Christ. 

First of all, to me, it means to walk in light of the cross. It's to walk in light of the fact that Jesus laid down his life, and non violently resisted the powers of this world and the violence and the sin of this world, in order to express God's love and forgiveness towards sin, by absorbing the pain and the wrath and the sin of mankind on the cross, He died a self sacrificial death. And I get to live in light of that. So I get to move away from the darkness of selfishness. 

And I get to walk in the light of self sacrifice of the cross, I also get to walk in the light to live in the light of the resurrection. That is, I get to be a person of hope, that I don't necessarily know how to explain the resurrection and all of its facets and details or to prove it or give perfect evidence of it to someone who might not believe that Jesus rose from the dead. But I believe that Jesus rose from the dead I believe that all of us will rise again from the dead who hope in Christ and therefore, I get to live in light of the resurrection. I get to live in hope. 

And I can tell you that my worst decisions in life have always been made as I have defined myself according to my pain, and my resentment and my guilt and my bitterness and my shame. My best decisions are always made in light of hope and faith. When I believe that there is resurrection that things come back to life that there is hope beyond what looks like a dead end what looks like a grave when I have Beyond that I can live in light of the resurrection. 

Here's the third one, when I live in light of grace, okay? When I live in light of grace, we live in a world of rules and condemnation. And we all fail to live up to the rules. We all try to impress and please other people, we all try to earn our way and we all fail and fall miserably short. But God comes in with His grace and says, You don't have to do that anymore. You don't have to earn love. You don't have to earn your worth. You don't have to prove that you're valuable. No, I am governed by grace, I receive and accept you on the basis of the goodness and the love of Jesus and, and therefore Grace has entered into your life. And to walk in the light means to walk in the light of grace is to live in the light of grace, it's to give myself grace, it's to give other people grace, it's to make room and make allowance and offer forgiveness to myself and to others for wrongdoing. It's to live in light of grace. 

Number four, to live in light of my new identity. That is, as a child of God as one who is indwelt, by the very spirit of God, I get to walk in the light of that, and physically active live in the light of love. Right, to move away from darkness and to walk in the light means to walk in the light to live in the light of love. To know that love is Jesus's economy, that God is love, that Jesus represented God by becoming loved to us by demonstrating the love of God on the cross, by showing us what love is all about, by making his kingdom all about love, by commissioning his movement, His Church, His people, to go out and love others, and love their neighbors and love one another, to find unity, to lay down hate and anger and resentment and instead to love. Instead, I get to walk in light of love. I get to walk in light of all that. 

So here's all that matters and bring it back together. When I walk according to darkness, according to the unenlightened me, when I keep walking the pattern of the me who had not yet met my maker, my Creator did not have a relationship with God. 

When I walk according to the pattern of the old me, who is still in the dark, I tend to make terrible decisions, okay. But when I walk in the light of Christ, when I learned the art of self sacrifice, when I walk in the light of the cross, when I walk in the light of the resurrection, when I walk under grace, when I'm studying those things, and thinking about those things, and meditating on those things, and I'm spending my days learning more and more about what it is to walk in those things, then I am living in a state of continual spiritual awakening. 

And it's not just a one time experience, it's not just the warm fuzzies on a Sunday. Instead, it's a daily awareness of what it means to stay in step with God who revealed Himself in Christ. Okay. That's the challenge. The challenge today is that all of us need a spiritual awakening, not just a one time moment, not just a wake up call. But all of us have a desperate need to walk in a state of continual spiritual awakening, which means every day dying little deaths to the old me, and awakening and becoming alive to the new me. It's saying goodbye to the me, who faked it to the me who put on the mask to the me who who was governed by resentment to the me who lived under a cloud of guilt and shame. And instead, it's awakening to and living in light of the one who has been born again, who understands Christ who understands God's presence and God's goodness, who moves away from darkness and walks in light of Christ. 

Now, here's the thing, this podcast is not going to fix all your problems overnight. It's not going to be that you shut this off and you go, Okay, I got to figure it out. Now, now I can live life well, no, this takes a lifetime. It's a daily, day in day out morning after morning, evening after evening, walking away from darkness recognizing the dark tendencies in me toward selfishness moving away from that, and instead awakening to and moving toward the light. 

It's walking under the light of wisdom and of God's truth. It's walking into the light of the Spirit's guidance is walking in the light of the example of Jesus Christ. It's walking in the light of doing what love would do in a given situation instead of what the old me in the old self would do. Okay, that's how you live in a state of continual spiritual awakening. 

Alright, that's it. That's the episode. I'm really thankful you listen to it. I'm happy to take feedback and questions at Wall campbell.com or or email me at Brandon at Wall campbell.com. I'd be very happy and thankful if you'd consider sharing this episode with somebody that might need to hear it, especially a young person in your life who's sort of forming their views and their values as they marched forward. And if you do this, if you do this work, if you appreciate what I have to say, and you want to support the podcast and all the other writing that I do, just go to walk humble.com/support You can drop a small one time gift or become a monthly supporter. Either way, I'm just glad you're here. 

I just want us to make progress together. But I want us to do it without the pretense and I hope that we can walk humble hand in hand with one another that we can become a community of people who see ourselves as called to more called to greater that we don't have to put on airs when I have to wear masks anymore. We can walk through life, faith and relationships one step at a time without all the pretense so hope you'll catch me next time. And if you have questions, let me know. Thanks for listening