A Spiritual Twist

[HKHaugan]

A Spiritual Twist

 Everything we do is influenced by what we can’t see.  There is an immediate evaluation made, a moral evaluation.  For instance, we look to others for approval.  We want to do the best to get promoted.  We want a good discussion, the right kind of boss, the best-looking wife, the nicest children in a proper neighborhood and so on.  Just the idea of making a good impression, not a bad one, is evidence that our motivation on every level has a moral value, and whatever we connect ourselves with has to have the appearance of ‘rightness.’  Morality is in the unseen spiritual realm, the context for choice.  It’s important to look good, better, best and right.  What you see is what you can’t see.

 However, there are two kinds of morality, social and spiritual.  We can choose to be spiritually moral or socially moral.  The choice is built into us from the time of our birth.  Even as children we saw who got the biggest piece of pie, the shinier bicycle and as teenagers, who was the coolest boy or girl and what it takes to be ‘in.’  Anything not to be singled out as ‘different,’ not ‘in, not ‘with it,’ but ‘out,’ the ‘odd one.’  It’s too lonely.  That’s social morality with a promised end, social rejection and aloneness. 

 But spiritual morality has to do with its source, God the Creator in whose image we are created (Gen.1:26) is Spirit (Jn.4:24).  We are spiritual images in physical form seeking to use that form to achieve the good, the better and the best according to God’s morality.  It starts personally within and is relational without.  It’s being ‘in’ with God and comfortable among others, the opposite of social morality with its devouring judgmentalism.

 So, it follows, that everything happening around us is something we attach to spiritual morality.  Everything has a spiritual twist.  No matter in what direction we turn, that very turning is a spiritual turning to see and choose spiritually.  What do I mean?  It is our invisible vision, our spiritual eyes and mind, the discernment we have that adjusts to the invisible atmosphere around us.  Even though our perception begins with physical senses, how we process it is in our spiritual heart.  Everyone lives in a spiritual atmosphere all the time.  Morality is the product of spirituality.  Yes, everything does have a spiritual twist.

 So, let’s cut to the spiritual chase.

 Life that surrounds us in a socially defined world sees the top drawer as achieving inner peace through social acceptance secured by wealth, status and power.  Social morality is what gets us there.  That is until we either achieve ‘there,’ become a winner and find ourselves alone at the top or become the outwitted losers where everyone else seems to be the winner.  Do we live a life of looking back and find that all the choices we made, the so-called ‘good’ social morality, fulfilled the promises it made?  It’s right here that we see the two moralities, the good and the bad, but only too late.  We made the ‘right’ choices, helped by the ‘right’ people following the ‘right’ social morality which produced the ‘right’ success, but what was really achieved?

 If we are believers in Jesus that gives us a new outlook.  It’s not what we achieve socially but who we trust and relate to spiritually that defines achievement.  We have a spiritual relationship with the God who created the seen and the unseen.  Life becomes spiritually relational living by faith not by daily fear of social death.  “Seek first the Kingdom of God and what He thinks is right and all the other stuff falls into place [how I see Mt.6:33].”  He gives us the Holy Spirit who guides us in our relational choices as we move from one person to another, choosing to leave the old way of anxious conformity to the new way of patient faith.  It’s like when the apostle Paul prays that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened (Eph.1:18)” since the social way sees through attitudes developed by the spirit of fear (Rom.8:15).  Those who are ‘born again’ see through inner spiritual eyes led by the Holy Spirit shifting from attitude to Spiritude. “So, from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.  Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we no longer do.  Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone and the new has come (2Cor.5:16-17).” 

 Spiritual consciousness is the Holy Spirit bringing Jesus as Lord of our choices.  We grow in Him as we process life scripturally.  Scripture is the work of the Holy Spirit who inspired its writers from Moses through the prophets and on through the Gospels and the other documents of the New Testament.  That’s what separates it from all other literature.  It is a life-inspiring, life-giving set of documents (2Tim.3:16) causing a spiritual reaction within as we read it. 

 The Bible is important because the spiritual dimension has evil spirits that empower a subtle social morality encouraging us to think and act separately from God.  The apostle John is quite clear about this when he writes, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come into the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.  This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world (1Jn.4:1-3).”

 Apply spirit-testing to all the social, political, economic movements and philosophies that beg our attention in the world around us.  What do we see spiritually?  What is really happening behind the scenes where division, hostility and emotional storms invade the relational environment in which we live?  What spirits, not of God, are actively promoting what our personal spirit senses to be evil and contrary to the peace and security of the numerous cultures around the planet?  What we will find is that there is only one spirit that counts and that is the Holy Spirit.  All others, especially the ones that justify attitudes and impetuous behavior, are not of God. 

 There’s a spiritual twist to everything.  Spiritual peace and security are ours in Christ regardless of the unrest in the fiery context that surrounds us.  Our moral choices are spiritual because we are led by the One Holy Spirit of God.  We choose faith in Jesus as we move into our every next conscious experience.  Expect the unexpected to be expected and respected, not infected, but selected, protected and directed by the Holy Spirit. 

 Do I hear an injected perfected ‘Amen?’