Many times we find ourselves so caught up in our ministry starting off that we forget our testimony and who we are from what we became. It’s easy to lose sight of living a real life when caught in ones self and in ones own accomplishments. Pride is the undetected disease but when it begins to form and take house in your spiritual mans body a fall is soon to come. I call it Living it Real for a reason; we as young men and women of God forget to live it real sometimes and the worst thing is we don’t even realize it. What can be worse than that is when we do finally realize it we deny it sometimes. "Who? Me…prideful? Me, this servant God who prays everyday…prideful? Not living it real? Yes…YOU. It hurts, I know, to be told that you struggle with pride, and that there is a possibility that you just might have a Sunday-to-Sunday relationship. "I pray once every day, I read my bible twice a day, and I help out in this ministry and that ministry, I’m even on the pastoral staff, I lead worship, I preach".Notice something in common with all of these defenses? "I" is before every one of them. You see you didn’t even realize it. We seem to forget that God gave us the breath to pray, and the eyes and knowledge to read, the abilities to be on the pastoral team, and the voice to sing and preach. Notice something different now? God is the one doing it, not you. We are only vessels for which God to do all these things through, one thing we need to be reminded of is that we are nothing without God. Living it Real isn’t how much we can do and where we are involved in but its remaining humble before the throne of God, and being obedient to whatever he asks of us. Who’s glory are you doing it for? Gods? Or yours? This danger is real and I tell you or warn you

rather to be on guard of your heart and in the "WHY" you do what you do for the kingdom. David, the man after Gods own heart, was just that because he was a man of continual repentance, a continual checking of his motives, a continual checking of his heart, and a checking of why he did what he did. Repentance involves humbling yourself before God and when your continually humbling yourself pride has nowhere to plant itself. The Bible says "Seek ye first  the Kingdom of God", not the kingdom of us, not the kingdom of Me and what I have done, but His kingdom which means you have to make yourself second. Sound hard? It is, and that’s what makes the calling, " Many  are called but FEW are chosen. Many can be called to do the work of God, and many can be called to fulfill the will of God in their lives, but only FEW can do it. FEW can die out to themselves daily, FEW can sacrifice everything they are for the fulfillment of the Kingdom, FEW can humble themselves as a servant of God living for His will and not their own. Along with this not forgetting where we came from, I am not saying ponder on your past but never forget you victories. Along with living it real comes living your testimony. The other day I was encouraging a friend of mine through his hard times. I began to pull out the big guns on the devil, and I began to encourage through my testimony of what I struggled with and how God brought me through it. I prayed for him little bit and was done, but a couple days after while I was praying God brought something to my attention. It was great that I used my testimony in the time of trouble of my friend to lift him up, but instead of just talking about it why wasn’t I living it. Living my testimony? I had never thought of that before, how does someone "live" the past? You live your testimony through your walk with God. Once you do this it will begin to show in your decisions, attitude and who the people around you see you as. It’s easy to say, "Hey man! God is so good to me, just thinking about what he has brought me from and all the great things he’s done," then on Monday you walk into work down and out with worries weighing on your mind, and that person you’ve been trying to witness to with your testimony is wondering, "Well great story but if that’s the result of your testimony I don’t see any difference from where I am now." See you talked it, but you didn’t walk it, you said, "I thank God for." but you lived, " Man why am I still struggling." Am I saying to be perfect? Absolutly not.  What I am saying though is that God would rather you live your testimony once than preach it a thousand times.  Paul continually lived his testimony throughout his ministry, people knew of his hardships and persecution but they also knew of his deliverance and his healing. Why? Because he lived his testimony, he lived the opposite of what he once was. A persecutor to an apostle. So how do you live your testimony? Live your life the opposite of what it once was, in every aspect of your life, from your countenance to your walk, from your words to your attitude.

Simply put, Living It Real.