REALITY

Romans 12:3--For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

Uncontrolled zeal is fanaticism—a condition never endorsed in the Bible. Unfulfilled verbage is hype—a first cousin to hypocrite. We become unreal when we have all the right answers but neglect application. Most people quickly learn to spot smoke devoid of fire.

Jesus calls us to follow Him. If we want to be spiritually real we must do just that! He calls us to study His manual—the Bible. Will we? He gives us open access to His presence. Will we share our hearts with Him? He quietly directs our conscience through the Holy Spirit. Do we submit to His lordship? Reality is defined by the word faithful. This is what the world desperately longs to see in God’s kids. Only in Christ we can “be all we can be!”

Inspiration
We make a divorce between a clear intellectual understanding of truth and its practical outcome. Jesus Christ never made such a divorce; He takes no notice of our fine intellectual conceptions unless their practical outcome is shown in reality . . . Overmuch earnestness blinds the life to reality, earnestness becomes our goal. We bank on the earnestness and zeal with which things are said and done, and after a while we find that the reality is not there, the power and presence of God are not being manifested, there are relationships at home, or in business, or in private that show when the veneer is scratched that we are not real. To say things well is apt to exhaust the power to do them, so that a man has often to curb the expression of a thing with his tongue and turn it into action, otherwise his gift of facile utterance may prevent his doing the things he says.—Oswald Chambers in Studies on the Sermon on the Mount.