Christian Character Building

Ron Block is a musician with Alison Krauss and Union Station. He wrote the following about the misunderstanding that we have of what it means to build Christian character:

"One of the best things we can do is ask God to show us the difference between soul and spirit. We often get things confused. Spirit--His Spirit within our spirit--is our identity, the reality, the thing that will stand naked or clothed with Christ before God at the end. Soul is the outer covering, the particular human personality, the shades of likings and dislikings, the emotions, the reason. Spirit knows. Soul reasons. Spirit is; Soul is variable depending on circumstances.

"As Christ-filled spirit people, we have an inner Rock. But most of us don’t know that Rock is there within us, because we conceive of God as 'up there' and us as 'down here' and that God gave a little tiny bit of His Spirit to maybe, sometimes, occasionally direct us and help us. But the truth is God doesn’t help us become something--become more patient, become more courageous, become more pure, more powerful, more loving. God is all those things. Christ within us is our courage, patience, purity, power, love. And because we are in Him, and He in us, we have total access by faith to all those qualities of His character.

"So for the Christian, character-building is not something built out of us, not something we 'get better at'; that is building with wood, hay, and stubble. Christian character is really His character coming more and more through us as we give ourselves over to Him in total faith and submission to His will within us.

"That’s why I know you really have no fear, deep down, only the right, reverent fear of God. None of us do, in the real identity that is there inside us in Christ, waiting for us. In that place we are just waiting to explode into the world.

"But the pressure of the world, and the devil pressing in on our flesh (soul/ body), and the lies he entices us to believe--all these things keep our spirit hidden, and that powerful expression of Christ in us muted. Because, of course, the righteousness of Christ is expressed through us by faith, and the devil is constantly working to get us to live from soul--from fear, rejection, dependence on others, and whatnot. The devil is terrified of believers who know who they are, who stand in faith, who 'call the things that are not as though they are.' These believers change the world, change their circle of family, friends, and enemies through a reliant, total faith and an unshakable confidence. Think Hudson Taylor. Rees Howells. C. T. Studd. The Apostle Paul. Jesus Himself. That unmoving confidence in God, and in God within them, shook the whole world--and that’s exactly what happens when we come to know who we are. We begin to shake up false, satanically driven thought-systems. We gain opposition, but we don’t care: 'I know Whom I have believed.'"