Have you ever noticed how when you hang with someone a lot, sometimes you will have those awkward moments when you both say the exact same phrase at the exact same time. Yeah...I am sure you guys have all experienced this. It is like you and your friend even start to share the same thoughts. When you both witness something unusual, you immediately look at each other and don't and communicate without even speaking a word, then the laughter breaks out. You are both with another one of your friends and one of you says something that does not make any sense to that poor helpless friend, but you both find hysterical. Your opinions become their opinions. When their heart breaks, your heart breaks. Their emotions strongly effect your emotions. It is like you two are becoming one.
Do you find yourself experiencing similar situations as the ones above with Jesus Christ?
Jesus prayed to his Father "I have given them (all believers) the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me" (John 17:22)
Jesus clearly states that we are to become one with Him, but how do we become one with Him? I know so many times I know I am not thinking what Jesus would be thinking, or even doing what Jesus would be doing. I have come to realize though, that the only way we are going to become just like Him, sharing the same thoughts and desires, is if we completely saturate ourselves in the Holy Spirit through His Word and through prayer.
First off, how in the world can we know our God if we are not reading His Word. From the Bible we can learn so much about Him and His plan for our lives and how He acts and how He responds, what He wants from us and just who He is.
Also, we must communicate to Him through prayer. Prayer has been the most difficult thing for me throughout my life as a believer. I have always struggled bringing myself to complete silence with my Savior and pouring out my heart to Him. We expect to grow in Him and become like Him, but how will we ever do this if we are not seeking Him with all our hearts. Jeremiah 29:13 says, "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." This is what is hard for me because there are just so many distractions that keep me from truly seeking God with my complete focused heart.
If we are not seeking Him, we are not finding Him, and if we are not finding Him, then we are not hanging out with Him, and if we are not hanging out with Him, then there is no way we will become one with Him.
I think the thing I have been learning the most is that God will respond to us. "The Lord will hear when I call to him" (Psalm 4:3). We can encounter the living God when we call upon His name. And how are we to know Him if we are not encountering Him.
And let us do all this and be brought to complete unity with the Lord so that the world may know that Jesus Christ was sent by the Father and that He has loved just as His Father has loved (John 17:23).
"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." (2 Corinthians 3:18)
We start to become one with Christ when we begin to think like Him, plan like Him, feel like Him, and act like Him.
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