Get Real!

“I want to be real!” Lamented a friend of mine as we were visiting one evening. “I want to have a purpose.”
I nodded in agreement. That statement echoed my own heart’s cry. To have a purpose. To know with certainty at the end of a day that I had not expended all of my energy reinforcing my wooden house with hay and stubble. To fall asleep knowing time had been spent on eternal things.


What is real?

But what does it mean to be ‘Be real’? And, how do we find our purpose? Real is risky. When the Velveteen Rabbit asked the Skin Horse what real was in the book, The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams, his reply was very insightful:

“It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
“I suppose you are Real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are real you can‘t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

What about us?

Now, what the Skin Horse couldn’t have known, (because its just a story), is that Jesus is the One who makes us Real. It happens the moment we are born-again, 2 Corinthians 5:17. However, becoming transformed into that reality does take time. There is a process that must be embraced in order for our purpose to be revealed. That process is called ‘growing in the Lord.’ Colossians 1:9-12. How do we do that? Growth comes as we develop habits of daily disciplines such as getting into the Word, fellowship with other believers & prayer, (see Acts2:42). These activities position us to realize what our purpose is and at the same time, equip us to express it in the most effective ways.

What is our purpose?

Every born-again believer has been given ‘The ministry of Reconciliation’, in which we are to reconcile people to God, 2Corinthians 5:18-20. How that ministry is expressed uniquely by each one of us is what we call our purpose. What does that look like? It will be something a bit different for each person. We find a clue as to what each one of our individual purposes is in Psalm 37:4; “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.”. As we spend quality time with the Lord and grow in our relationship with Him, we will find ourselves delighting more and more in Him. Desires begin to grow in our hearts that were planted by the Lord. David assures us that the Lord will give us those very desires.


We need passion!

Our purpose must be driven by a passion for the Lord. Any other motivation will render us useless in the end. We learn in 1Corinthians 13:3 that if we do things without love, it will profit us nothing. A passion for the Lord is what will keep us going when there is no other earthly reason to continue. If there is no passion, it is easy to quit. Passion for the Lord is what drove David through all those years of running from Saul and others. He was called ‘A man after God’s own heart’. The process works in a wonderful cycle: time spent with the Lord brings knowledge of God’s love, which produces passion which inspires hunger for more of Jesus which drives us to spend more time with Him, which brings more revelation of His love….

Passion prayer:

But what if the fires of passion are beginning to dim, or are smoldering? Confess a lack of passion as a sin and ask for forgiveness. Ask Him to relight the fire. Pray for a fire so big that everyone will come and watch you burn. Pray for a fire of love for Jesus that is so strong that the world cannot dim it, nor can death put it out. Pray for an eternal fire of love for Jesus to burn in you and consume all that has no eternal value so that you will come forth as gold. Refined.
Get real.

Senia Owensby
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