<\/p>\n
\u201cI am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.\u201d -John 15:1<\/em><\/p>\n What is real? What is \u2018the real thing?\u2019 Coke\u00ae markets itself as \u201cthe real thing\u201d. But is real anything money can buy? What is real to you?<\/p>\n When I was 17, I attended a New Age workshop. I was looking for the real thing \u2013 that is, I was looking for an authentic faith experience. I was looking for God. I had grown up in environments that were pretty religious. But my heart wanted more. I was looking for authenticity \u2013 a tangible faith \u2013 something that my heart could connect to and not be shut down.<\/p>\n We did all sorts of meditation, Reiki, and visualization techniques in this class. We tapped into the spiritual and soul realm through doing these activities with other people. There were people of all faiths there \u2013 as far as religion was concerned, anything went. It was definitely real. I could feel the \u201cenergy\u201d going on in the room, the spiritual dynamic. But, several weekends into the class I found myself becoming more and more depressed. A spirit of heaviness came more and more over my life. At one point I ran out of the room in tears because I realized that I was allowing something dark into my life. I knew Jesus at the time, but I had a hard time connecting to Him. I knew that this wasn\u2019t Him. It became dark, as quickly as I thought it had been light. I realized it was counterfeit light, and I needed to get away as quickly as possible for the health of my soul.<\/p>\n Several months later I attended another Christian church for the first time on my own. God met me with a powerful worship experience and even put a rainbow on the word screen as confirmation of my attendance there. (My personal testimony involves rainbows.) I knew right then that this was where I was supposed to be. Even though my heart had been calloused from past experiences, I was ready to be made new again. My heart was open to connecting with God. And from that day forward, I sought the true God who became the real thing to me.<\/p>\n Would you call your experience with God \u201cthe real thing\u201d? If not, why not ask Him, wholly and truly, if He would make Himself more real to you. He will when you seek Him. And He promises always to be there when we seek Him. (Matthew 7:7) He is the Real Thing.<\/p>\n Subscribe Now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Real Thing \u201cI am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.\u201d -John 15:1 What is real? What is \u2018the real thing?\u2019 Coke\u00ae markets itself as \u201cthe real thing\u201d. But is real anything money can buy? What is real to you? When I was 17, I attended a New Age workshop. I was<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[182,477,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-12003","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-devotionals","8":"tag-god","9":"tag-real","10":"tag-today"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}