Colossians 2:16-19 ESV
Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. [17] These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. [18] Let no one disqualify you and defraud you of your prize, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, [19] and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
The substance of the Christian life is the person of Jesus and our experience and manifestation of him. There are those that try to tell us that the key to spirituality is through keeping rules and regulations. Some say that spirituality is an issue of self-denial, or fasting, while others will tell us it’s a matter of ecstatic charismatic experiences and visions. Christianity is all about Jesus, for he is the great prize that every believer possesses. It is imperative that we don’t allow people to defraud us of that prize by insisting that we experience what they’ve experienced or that we live the lifestyle that they have lived. We are called to simply abide in Jesus, holding fast to him who is the Head, and if we do, we will grow a growth that is from God. Of course, there are things Jesus will do, and there are things that he will not do (moral and societal rules that he won’t break). There will certainly be amazing charismatic experiences when you abide in the supernatural person of Christ, and there will be times of prayer and fasting in your life of lovesick devotion to Jesus. Still, none of those things are the substance of Christianity. Jesus is. The prize isn’t when you’ve reached a place of radically practicing the spiritual disciplines or when you have extraordinary encounters with the miraculous nature of life in Christ. The prize is him, and him alone. Everything else revolves around that reality. If you are in Christ, then you already have the greatest testimony of all. You already possess in his person everything that’s needed to supernaturally grow into Christlike maturity. Hold fast to him and stay open to everything he wants to present to you and that he wants you to experience, but never allow someone else’s story make you feel spiritually lacking. If you have Jesus, then you have the substance that is the Christian life.