Application Redux

I've now rewritten the article on application at least five times (keeping many of the main themes, but trying to "flesh it out" differently). Each day it seems that things can be said differently. Application isn't a quick-fix kind of answer. It's a daily enlarging of esteem for God and reduction in esteem of self apart from the cross. It can't be going to the Bible for answers - that turns scripture into a tool. It has to be going to the Bible for questions. It's we who are dead apart from the gospel, not vice versa. Yes, application means obedience...but who are we obeying?

Application, it seems, isn't something that will require a huge answer. Application is, after all, a work of the Spirit. Application is what happens when we participate in our sanctification by daily, contemplative prayer and reading. That's it. It's not less than obedience. It's not less than perspective shifting. It's all of that and more. It's a deepening relationship. It's a foundation for moving through life.

Application is accepting God's reality and accurately labelling ours as a lie. Application then means to cease pouring so much energy into maintaining a lie. Application, then, is rest. It's moving into sacrificial living because we see have accepted the reality that we're strangers in this world. It's moving into prayer because we have accepted the reality that God really is who he says he is and we really are nothing apart from the meaning he supplied us on the cross.

You can say all of this in 1000 words or you can say it in 10. You can say it all, but I don't think you can really define it. Any definition falls short.