September 21, 2022
“I have given them the glory You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one” (John 17:22).
“Ayo, they said it was over, man
They said it was over!
But it ain't over, we just gettin' started…
Stand up, hands up
If you truly love the Son of Man, trust
Jesus is alive and His people, He'll revive
And His fame is gonna spread across the land.
Stand up, hands up
Does anybody love the Son of Man? Trust
Jesus is the King so His people, we will sing
And forever say, ‘Worthy is the Lamb.’”
-Shai Linne
“Stand Up”
From “Is This Heaven?”
“Tabitha had moved out of the mansion and was texting her tour guide, and then she saw a notification: ‘James has left this realm,’ which reminded her she couldn’t text him anymore. She wondered how he moved from realm to realm, if she could one day follow him, and what it would take to get there.”
When we’re brand new Christians, we have been given a “phone.” That means, we have been given the Holy Spirit who puts love in our hearts for the one true God–I AM–and who “will teach [us] all things and will remind [us] of everything I [Jesus, the Word] have told you [from first to last in all the Scriptures]” (John 14:26). The Spirit also puts love and connection in our hearts for all the saints in Christ and enables us to communicate with and enjoy the fellowship of other new arrivals into the Kingdom of God with the same level of zeal and excitement. In fact, we can enjoy that common bond in Jesus with Christians of every walk of life and every type of experience–at a basic level. But I propose there’s two areas of disconnect: one is in calling. We naturally have much easier fellowship and understanding among brothers and sisters whom Jesus works with in a similar way by how He’s called them. For example, everyone who excels at hospitality easily works well with and understands those with the same gift, while teachers tend to gravitate toward one another. This has to do with “body parts” --Jesus’ body–the church. Toes are all together; fingers are all together; eyes are found together, and ears are pretty close. I’m not going to focus in on this aspect, though. The majority of this post is going to be on “realms,” which I am about to define.
The second area of disconnect has to do with understanding of God and His truth. Newborn babies have no ability to enter into the experiences of older children or adults, by no fault of their own but simply due to their lack of brain synapses and personal experiences that prevent comprehension. Likewise, newborn Christians will find that many who have been walking in Christ much longer or in a more-intense pursuit of Him, end up “in another realm” where others who don’t share those meat courses in the Word and experience cannot really find deep connections.
There’s no easy answer to that. Maturity has to happen. Children probably have to skin their knees to learn how to run. No amount of trying to explain will teach children how to run. They have to use their legs and build their muscles. But here’s the good news! The same power that raised Jesus from the dead, which also raised our spiritually dead hearts to life, is the same power that is working in us to “will and to do of His good pleasure” (Phil 2:13). And what is His good pleasure? Jesus said it in our introductory verse: “that they [the Christians] may be one as We [the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] are one” (John 17:22b). Why does He want us to be one? So we speak with one voice what is His voice–His will and His truth.
Jesus is going to see to it that His earthly representatives will at last, as one body all united, fully reflect Him as He would be reflected. This means that Jesus is not leaving our sanctification to chance; He will not lose one of us for His purpose in His body (Jn 10:28-29, 6:39). Jesus is building His church, one stone (person) at a time, and He is building those spiritual brain synapses by training us. “I [Jesus] still have much to tell you, but you cannot yet bear to hear it. 13However, when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth” (John 16:12-13). Now, the speed of that training and the speed of our victory over the world is dependent on (mysteriously in God’s providence) our cooperation in faith, meaning, trusting Him for each step He takes us (“Everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith” - 1 John 5:4). Are we learning from His discipline, or just trying to get past it so we can “get on with our lives”? If we’re not listening to the counsel He is trying to get us to listen to through the attention-grabber of trials, we are fighting our own eternal life! We’re fighting knowing God! We’re fighting His effort to move us to other realms of greater light and away from the darkness of this world. And, we’re completely clueless about what our lives are really for. Is God throwing “monkey wrenches” into our lives? What is the point of life? Why do we have the specific sequence of routines and jobs and events and children or not, spouse or not, family or lack thereof, wealth or poverty, health or illness, strength or weakness, etc., etc.? Did we ordain it? Did we birth ourselves? Did we set ourselves up for the situations in which we find ourselves? We might think we did. But WE DID NOT. Even our desires and volition to pursue something came from God. God DID IT ALL. And for what purpose? That we might find Him in each detail! “God intended that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). Every detail of our lives is a facet by which we can learn to see God for who He is in what He’s doing in that detail.
How exactly do we listen and see in the midst of life that seems to distract us from God? God is the master of turning upside down what Satan is trying to do. While Satan tries to use life to distract us from God, Jesus has overcome the world, and is using life to help us know God. It’s not like knowing God and life are at odds, and we just have to get through this life so we can finally get to heaven to know God. NO, this life is the vessel of God’s voice to us.
To understand this more fully, we have to get to the bottom of this life’s purpose. What is its goal? Is it to get to another “realm” of glory or power or accomplishment or reward? Even though God actually has promised these things “with the package” of eternal life, that is not and should not be our goals. Why not? Because they can become in and of themselves idols–things that we set up in our hearts as objects of worship–over God Himself. So what else can (and should) motivate us, then, to pursue godliness and truth? After all, it is really hard to fight against the tide of the flesh, the world, and the devil without motivation. What will keep us from giving up? PERSPECTIVE.
Tabitha’s observation of James moving into other “realms” was an observation of his movement in perspective. James had begun to see God and himself in a way that shed more truth on his reality; an inability to relate to that truth made Tabitha unable to continue in communion with James. What will enable Tabitha to reconnect with James? Understanding the truth.
In the last blog post, we already established that eternal life IS knowing God. We are born completely and utterly blind and dead to an understanding of the spiritual and God. When the Holy Spirit quickens our hearts and opens our mental eyes to begin to grasp the truth from God’s perspective, the rest of life is about obtaining more and more perspective from His lens. That is a big part of knowing God–being able to look through His lens. This is a natural conclusion for us concerning human relationships. If we know someone well enough, we won’t even bother asking them if they want to go with us to the baseball game if we know they hate baseball. We have looked through their lens, in a sense. We have assessed the environment around that person through what we imagine that person’s own mind would think: Oh, he will just say, “I don’t like baseball.” We have “impersonated” him in order to make a judgment call on whether or not to even invite him to the game. Why is it that those who know God the best so often see powerful answers to prayer? Is it because they have so much more “sway” with God? God is unchanging; He has ordained all things that exist and all events of all time from eternity past. No mere mortal can “sway” God. Those who see answers to prayer have tapped into an understanding of God that I dare say far too few of us relate to. Those who see God moving in response to their prayers are praying according to God’s will, and God has chosen to make His people a part of the movement of His will. Eternal life is becoming aware of that movement of His will and how He is using us.
Again, I assert that this life is the vessel of God’s voice to us. All that is physical is a vessel of His voice to us, IF we have the Holy Spirit to properly interpret it. Otherwise, our deceitful hearts and Satan’s lies will twist it into a delusion. “...they refused the love of the truth that would have saved them. 11For this reason God will send them a powerful delusion so that they believe the lie, 12in order that judgment may come upon all who have disbelieved the truth and delighted in wickedness” (2 Thess 2:10b-12). The foundation of properly understanding what God aims to teach us through this life is the Holy Spirit-inspired, inerrant Scriptures, the Bible. “Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone” (Eph 2:19-20). Everything that we think the Spirit is teaching us through life MUST be grounded in and supported by the Word of God, that is, the Bible. I’m not talking about what people call the “word of God” as they think they hear Him speaking in their heads. Any voice that we hear in our heads must be subjected to Scripture. “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a curse!” (Gal 1:8)
With Scripture as the foundation and the Holy Spirit as the interpreter, we can begin to move from “glory to glory” of knowing God as we become more and more aware of how the elements declare His praises.
“The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
2Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge” (Ps 19:1-2).
“You will indeed go out with joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Is 55:12).
“Let the sea resound, and all that fills it,
the world, and all who dwell in it.
8Let the rivers clap their hands,
let the mountains sing together for joy
9before the LORD” (Ps 98:7-9).
All things were created to “speak” for God. All things are a language to declare His glory. Even the wicked will suffer in hell forever as a language declaring His justice. “And the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever. Day and night there is no rest for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name” (Rev 14:11). “And many who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake, some to everlasting life, but others to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan 12:2).
While those in the paradise of God are shining like the stars of heaven (Dan 12:3) in worship to the glorious God of love for who He is and for His goodness toward them, those in hell could not cease to be there, lest the testimony of God’s justice fail to resound.
God uses the typology of the church as His “body” as another image to help us understand: what we do is a physical testimony on the earth and before heaven of His glory. It is like the physical manifestation of Himself on the earth the way our body physically responds to our mind and spirit. With this perspective, it is impossible to boast! “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever! Amen” (Rom 11:36).
So the next time you feel a prick of pride rising in you, remember that it was God who did whatever is tempting you to boast, and He just used you as His vessel. See how true perspective realigns our very attitudes and responses unto holiness? It helps us see reality through the right lens, the lens of a higher realm.