Believe Become Be: Becoming the Man God Believes You Can BeShembull

 In this passage, how does God promise to bless us? Look at and listen to His Word. Do what it says and do not forget it as you live. Believe to become to be.

As we read the Bible, application of the words is the true key to transformation. If everyone who read Scripture actually applied God’s principles to experience real life change, we’d be living in a vastly different world today. The Bible is full of if/then statements with God offering us hundreds of these possibilities for our lives.

All religions or belief systems assume you are ignorant of their ways when you first believe. You are then taught their “truth,” or major pillars. When you understand those points, you become enlightened or move into revelation of knowledge in the beliefs. Most of the world’s religious systems teach that if you go from ignorance (not knowing) to knowledge (knowing), you have arrived. You understand and embrace the teaching therefore you are changed. Understanding is arrival. 

But does arrival come with understanding? Is that really true? When do you know someone loves you? When they tell you they understand the concept of love? When they speak the words I love you? No. You believe someone loves you when you experience actual acts and affirmations of love from the person.

Think about your own journey. How did you get good at what you do? And how many of us end up doing something vastly different from our college degree or what other credentials state because we got actual experience at another career? We can only become great at what we apply.

Being effective at anything in life comes through commitment coupled with experience. For years we have heard it takes ten thousand hours dedicated to a skill to become an expert. Connecting this concept to us as men who follow Christ, we grow by commitment coupled with experience. When you talk to a man who has put in ten thousand hours of walking with God intimately, you won’t just know it; you will also feel it. There is only one way to gain such experience. Put in the time. Expend the energy. Do the work. Commit knowledge to application. Believe to become to be.

Considering today’s Bible passage, what is one thing you have recently read in His Word that you believe God is calling you to apply?