Video Transcript Below
I want to tell you a story about a 16-year-old boy that I met several years back in my office. And, I’ll never forget him. He really inspired me in ways that I still remember. And, so I was in my office and this lady comes in with her 16-year-old son, and she plops him down in the chair and she says, I heard you’re the Jesus lawyer, and my son needs a lot of Jesus. And I was like, well, okay. And he kind of looks kind of sheepish, and he is looking at me. And so I dismissed mom and said, okay, tell me what’s going on. And of course he was very ashamed. He got into some trouble. So I just started asking him some questions. I said, what’s the greatest thing you think you could do with your life? And, deep down in your heart, what do you think that God created you to do? And, he had some thoughts about it. I mean, he had some definite thoughts about it. I said, well, do you feel like you’re on that path? And he was like, well, no. And I said, well, here’s the good news. I’ve been where you are many times, and God hasn’t given up on you yet.
And so I proceeded to tell him my own testimony of salvation and found out he’d been born again a couple years earlier. And he actually said, when I was born again, I was excited about serving God, and I was excited about the things that God had planned for me. And he said, but then, I got caught up in football and different things. I wanted to be popular and I wanted to be liked by the girls and all that. And I said, man, I get it. That doesn’t change just because you age. That’s the same. Unfortunately, we all want to be loved, right?
And the problem is that the things that we pursue to be loved, aren’t the things that give us love, unless that pursuit is God. And so I shared with him, you know, I own, you know, 20 years of walking in, as a born again Christian, walking as a plastic Christian, a person who was pretending, you know, doing all the motions and having the religion without the relationship. And he said, well, I just feel so ashamed, I don’t feel like God wants me back. And I said, oh, that’s not true. I said, Jesus didn’t go through all the trouble to draw you to him, first of all, and die for you, in order to just cast you off when you fall out of the relationship, so to speak. I said, just like when you were born into your mother and father’s family, you’ll always be their son biologically. Now, you may fall out of fellowship with them because you misbehaved. But that’s the relational part, the biological part will always be there. When you’re born again into the family of God, you are forever in the family of God. You are genetically, you are in Christ. That’s what the Bible says. And you can’t ever lose that, because otherwise God would be a liar. And so that would mean that we were working for our salvation. The Bible makes it very clear we’re not. And he was like, well, you know, I do know that in my head, but I just don’t know how, how do I live good enough to be in a relationship with God? And so we talked about that.
I said, well, first of all, surrender is the key point. I said, you had to surrender in order to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you had to have a thing called repentance, Right? Which means you’re going this direction, and God says, well, if you really want me, you’re going to have to turn around and go back the other direction. And when you surrender to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Lord and Savior, you turn around and you’ve committed to surrender your entire life to him. The problem is we take it back. And, so we were talking about that.
And in the context of our Christian life, I said the whole idea is, 95% of God’s plan for us is in his word. He tells us to study his word, to pray, to be an active member of a church. He tells us to live holy, to live in obedience. And he tells us to share the gospel. He tells us to disciple, right? All these things he tells us we’re to do. And when we’re doing those things, that’s 95% of the plan. And the great thing is, when we’re doing that, it’s kinda like when we’re in the army, in basic training, right? You’re not going to be special operations until you have completed basic training. And you’ve shown that you’ve proven yourself. And when you start proving yourself in those things, then guess what? Then the fruits of God’s spirit start flowing through you, his love, his joy, his peace, and you’re satisfied. You’re completely satisfied.
So when people meet you, they think, man, he’s got it going on. You know, what’s he got that I don’t have? And so because everybody wants peace and joy and love, right? Everybody wants goodness and kindness and gentleness and meekness. And so when we live in obedience, in the relationship with Christ, the more we gain these fruits of God’s spirit. And also on top of the fruits of his spirit, we have wisdom and we get strength, right? And so we’re walking around and we’re the strongest person anybody knows because of Jesus. And that just involves submitting ourselves to the relationship.
All relationships require submission. I told him he’s a football player. I was like, man, you have to submit yourself to the coach, and you have to get in the weight room, and you have to go practice and do all these things if you want to play. Same thing with God. But his rules and his ways are much better and much more satisfying, lasting, fulfilling, and give us a more satisfying life than any kind of man made rules for any team or even a family, or even a marriage. God’s rules are satisfying because he’s perfect, and he’s the perfect part of the equation of the relationship. And all he does is give, give, give, Right? And when we’re letting him give to us, because we’re putting ourselves positionally in a place where we can reap the benefits of the relationship with him, then we have lots to give away to others, and people are attracted to us. And so I was telling him about all this, right? And I could see, you know, as his face started changing, he started, it’s like he was getting the spark of hope back, right?
So, back to the story. So he left my office that day, and he ended up hiring me to take care of some things. And I did. And then after my representation, I got a letter from him. And I’ll never forget it, it completely changed my life. His letter, he wrote words I’ll never forget. He said, quote, “when I met you, I was jealous of your relationship with Jesus”. Oh my gosh. This is a 16-year-old boy who’s saying these things. His words have motivated me over and over and over again to live up to that. Because I want people, when they look at me, to see Jesus, I want that because he’s everything, I can’t give them anything. You know, if people are like, oh, you’re so beautiful, you’re talented, you’re a great lawyer, you’re a great grandma, you’re a great mother, you’re a great daughter. All those things are limited. They’re limited in what we can give away. But when we have Jesus and His strength, His wisdom, His peace, His love, His joy flowing out of us, we’re unlimited in what we can give away, because it’s not us, it’s him. And that’s what this young man saw in me that day.
And you know, the book of Ephesians tells us to be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us. That’s Ephesians 5:1-2. That should be our goal, to imitate. Imitate God, imitate Christ. The Bible really simply says, God is love, right? And we’ve talked about this a lot, that the essence of God’s love is agape love that’s talked about in the Bible. It is selflessness. Jesus poured all of himself out for us. And you know what? We can’t do that for other people unless Jesus is pouring into us, and we won’t, Jesus won’t pour into us in a way that can be manifested to others unless we are surrendering to him, unless we’re engaged in daily repentance, daily turning back towards him.
You know, repentance is something, it’s not some big mystery. We do it every day. Go on a diet, fall off the wagon, eat the twinkie, and then guess what? You’ve got to stop eating the Twinkies.Turn around, get back on the wagon, right? You go to the gym for a whole week, right? Because you’re going to get in shape. And then you go for a week without going to the gym. What do you have to do? You’ve got to change. You got to turn back, turn back around. That’s repentance. You’re going to get back on the wagon. Same thing with God. If we want to pursue a relationship with him so much, so we are so passionate about him, that he is the most important part of our life, then we will live in obedience to his word. We will want to live in his plan. His plan’s not difficult. Well, I say it’s not difficult. It’s not difficult if he’s the one working through us. It’s not complicated. It’s more like I should say, he said obey my word. Read my word. Study my word. You know, pray to me, converse with me. Develop a relationship with me. Preach the gospel. Share your testimony. Teach others how to know me. I mean, it’s really Jesus. Of course He broke all the commandments down into two things. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Love your neighbor as yourself. But what that practically means is obedience to his word, Right? He’s given us lots and lots of things to do and to show how we can manifest him in us.
The Bible is, of course, full of verses about this. But when we’re born again, the book of Ephesians says, that before we’re born again, and this is Ephesians 4:17- 24, that we are blind to God’s ways. We are ignorant. We’re, the way that it’s described in the Bible is where we walk as in the futility of our mind, we have our understanding darkened. We’re alienated from the life of God because we’re ignorant and our heart is blind. We have, we’re past feeling. We’ve given ourselves over to unhealthy living, to unkind living, living that is debauched.
You know, this young man, he was telling me some things he’d done. I said, look, you’re not special that way. Everybody goes that way. Everybody tends to go that way. When we’re not following God, that’s where we go. And when you’re born again, and you fall back into that, into that thinking that is futile, that is dark, that is blind, well, of course you’re miserable. Of course you, you want to get back. But the Bible, the Ephesians Four goes on to say that you have not so learned of Christ. If you have heard of him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus, then you have put off concerning your former lifestyle, and you’ve put off the things that you did before, and you’re renewed in the spirit of your mind, and you put on the new man. In other words, you’ve been born again, right? Your new man, the person that Jesus Christ of soul and spirit, that Jesus Christ has made alive, has. It is the real you. And that’s the way you want to live. You want to live by the code of conduct of the mind of Christ, right? And his mind is found in his word. His mind lives in us, and we connect His word to him inside of us. Then we live with a passion and a love and a peace. We’re not in despair, we’re not anxious. We’re not unkind. Sure we can fall into those things, but we again, repent and ask the lord, Hey Lord, I don’t want to live that way. Right? And we train ourselves.
Psalms 119 talks about the word of God and all the benefits of the word of God. And in one of the verses is thy word, have I hidden my heart that I might not sin against you? When we learn to absorb God’s word, to the extent that it reshapes our thinking, it reconfirms our talking. It changes our walk. That we have the mind of Christ, right? And when we have the mind of Christ, we produce the fruits of His spirit, and they’re evident. You know? And this young kid saw me, met me, and the Holy Spirit flowed out of me. And he saw real peace and just a passion for Christ. I’m so grateful he didn’t see me. I’m so grateful he didn’t think, oh, this lawyer, she sounds like she’s pretty successful. Oh, I’m glad that he thought I could do my job, but I’m glad what he saw most of what Jesus’s Christ, because that’s what changed his life. And that’s what changed my life. And hopefully that’s what you want to change your life. Because it’s the only change that matters. You know, I could lose 20 pounds. Yeah, you know what? That’s a struggle. It’ll always be with me. Because I’ve always been a big girl. But when I change what’s inside of me, that makes eternal ripples in people’s lives. And it will for you too.
When we decide we want to live in true righteousness and holiness, like what Ephesians Four talks about, we draw close to God, who is love, and only then do the fruits of his spirit flow through us. And it is magnificent.There’s nothing like the fruits of God’s spirit. We can’t imitate them. We can’t mimic them. Only God can give us his love, his joy, his peace, his goodness, his kindness, his mercy, his love. And I said, love twice. And so, if you want people to see Jesus when they look into your eyes, when you want them to see Jesus, then you have to draw close to him. You have to make a commitment to him every day,to repent from your old ways and turn to him and be found faithful in Him. So when people look at you, I hope that you want them to meet Jesus when they meet you.
We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.
To learn more about Kimberly Faith and the mission of Faith Strong, click HERE.
Out Now – Essential Faith, Volume II. Find it on Amazon by clicking HERE.
To learn more about Kimberly Faith’s ministry Fostering By Faith, click HERE.
