TRUE SPIRITUALITY
The Christian life is the divine experiment of grace made visible in human form. We are vessels, not merely of belief, but of purpose — instruments through which the eternal intentions of God flow into time. The Creator, who governs galaxies and atoms with the same quiet command, has redeemed us from the futility of living for self. We have not been rescued to rest, but to walk — not to sit in the still pew of comfort, but to move in the living current of good works prepared before the dawn of creation. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” The true Christian does not merely do good things; he becomes a conduit of divine goodness itself.
The order of divine life is precise: the presence of God must precede the purpose of God. From communion springs commission. To seek His will without seeking His face is like attempting to draw power from a machine without first connecting it to its source. God reveals His purpose only to those who live near enough to hear His whisper. This is the first law of true spirituality — to love the Lord with all one’s heart, soul, and mind. Until that love becomes supreme, every other ambition is disordered, every work premature. The soul that does not walk intimately with Jesus cannot rightly work for Him.
Much that is called “Christian work” today is simply human effort baptized in religious language. It can be efficient, even admirable, but it may not be spiritual. The world applauds moral activity, but heaven measures only the movement of grace through yielded hearts. True divine work is never self-originated. It is the breath of Christ exhaled through human vessels of clay. God has chosen to hide His power in earthen forms so that the glory might remain His. The hands move, the lips speak, the feet go — yet it is God who works within both to will and to do His good pleasure.
Here is the heart of all spirituality: abiding. Not striving, but staying. Not rushing into activity, but remaining in dependence. Our Lord’s parable of the vine and branches describes not the tension of labor but the tranquility of connection. The branch does not force fruit into existence; it simply abides, and the life of the vine does the rest. This is a divine equation as fixed as the laws of physics. Just as the stars keep their appointed courses by the gravity that holds them, so the Christian bears fruit only by the unseen gravity of grace.
When Jesus said, “Without Me you can do nothing,” He was not speaking metaphorically. Apart from Him, nothing truly spiritual can be achieved. There may be outcomes, but not fruit; achievements, but not abiding value. Just as no instrument can produce music once severed from the musician, so no believer can manifest God’s work apart from union with Christ. The law of spiritual productivity is constant: connection determines creation. Therefore our greatest work is not to work, but to remain connected.
Yet how rarely this is understood! Religion multiplies activity while neglecting intimacy. We substitute the machinery of programs for the mystery of presence. True spirituality, however, is not common among those who claim the name of Christ. It requires a surrender of self-sufficiency, a deliberate yielding of will to the quiet authority of Jesus. To abide is to live every moment in conscious dependence upon Him — to breathe, think, act, and rest in His presence. It is the rarest and highest art of Christian life.
And so the measure of true spirituality is not the amount of work we do, but the degree to which Christ lives through us. To abide in Him is to participate in the logic of divine life — as natural as light from the sun, as inevitable as fruit from the branch. When the soul remains in union with its Savior, all of heaven’s resources flow through it, and the world beholds not the worker, but the work of God. This is the mind of faith, the science of grace, the true spirituality that weds devotion to understanding — a life where Christ is both the power and the purpose, the reason and the result.
Bryan Dewayne Dunaway
