Proverbs 3:5-7: Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take. Don’t be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, fear the Lord and turn away from evil.

Throughout biblical history, the Lord has called and drawn His people to Himself. God desires our fellowship because He loves us more than our spiritual hearts or our human minds have the ability to comprehend. God has shown us His vast love through the cross of His Son Jesus. There He demonstrated to us just how much He values His fellowship with His children. God didn’t allow sin and our initial rejection of His love to stop Him from loving us even greater. It was one thing for God to make a garden and offer mankind dominion, but when man rejected His love for the pleasures of sin, God gave His only-begotten Son as ransom for our sin debt.

When we’re first drawn to Christ as a sinner to receive forgiveness for our sins, God is also inviting us to get to know Him on a personal and intimate basis. This is where the battle begins for a new convert. It’s easy to fall into a spiritual “rut” once you become born again. There is a tendency to believe that getting saved is all there is to spiritually acquire. However, can I say that salvation is only the beginning of an awesome relationship with your Creator and Father?

As you begin to pursue a deeper walk of faith and a greater understanding of who God is and who you are in Christ, Satan will begin to stir up either your flesh or the flesh of others to try and dissuade you from pursuing intimacy with the Lord. Now, let’s see how today’s scripture can encourage us to trust in the Lord and lean not to our own understanding. If we continue to walk according to our fleshly desire, and the carnal knowledge that we trusted in as a sinner, even though we’re born again, it will prevent us from getting to know our God. If we don’t get to know God beyond salvation, then how will we come to trust Him to lead us?

Therefore, all who have received Christ must come to the same place that John the Baptist came to in his own ministry. After the initial experience of salvation, we must listen to the Holy Spirit and begin the process of being transformed through the renewing of our minds so that we might become like Christ. When Jesus arrived on the scene and was baptized by John, John said that he must decrease and Christ must increase. After we are baptized into Christ, we, too, must begin the humbling process of decreasing in the carnal knowledge of our past and begin listening to the leading of God’s Spirit to bring into conformity to God’s will for us as His children.

We must train ourselves to develop a taste for the things of God so that we will begin to seek God and value the times of refreshing that comes from being in His presence. If we should ignore or lose interest in the development of spiritual senses and appetite, then our spirit man will remain immature and weak against the strategies of Satan. Satan preys upon the spiritual ignorance of Christians, especially when we don’t invest the time that is needful for us to become one with God.

Paul teaches us throughout his writings that we should have our mind and/or the spirit of our mind renewed in order that we might put off the old man who grows corrupt. As we grow in the knowledge of the Lord and walk by faith, we will be renewed and begin to put on the new man or take on our new identity which is created in true righteousness and holiness. Salvation is more than a onetime experience. It is the beginning of becoming Christ-like as we walk by faith and seek to become one with Him through obedient faith.  —submitted by Pastor Asa Dockery, US