Are We Plugged In?

[HKHaugan]

If you’ve ever been hiking and gotten caught in a drenching shower there’s nothing like finding a shelter where you can dry off, change clothes and have something warm to drink. Then, waiting awhile for the sun to break through, you walk out into its soothing rays, breathe the invigorating after-the-rain air, rest in the shadow of the lighted blue sky, hear the sounds of birds singing, leaves dripping and behold a refreshed forest of washed trees, and canopies of blossoming wildflowers---then comes the flood of realization---God did this for you and me, all of us. This is a person-to-person gift from the Creator.  Psalm 91:1 "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty," is what made me recall that picture, a still shot from another day, which carries an eternal sense of awareness of who God is as He reveals Himself in Jesus. How through Jesus all this came into being.

There are so many companion experiences that find their way into our memory log. If we were to sort them out we would find a treasury of incidents, God-incidents, which remind us of the personal nature of our Creator. It’s also a reminder that each of us was created to have such experiences so that we could see how deeply personal God is and how deeply personal He is with each of us.

The beauty inherent in the universe, specifically as we see it localized here on earth, reflects the unique mind of God and how He has endowed the images of Himself to drink in His concepts, beauty being one of them. When we begin to see beauty, love, reason, faith, compassion, kindness and their expression individualized in personal minds, hearts and spirits, then our hearts have felt the Creator’s mind, heart and Spirit of which each of us is an image created to enjoy Him and all He is. We dwell in the shelter of God’s enjoyment and rest in the beauty of His Creation.

But what about the visible world and the science that investigates it?

Rather than a threat to faith, it serves us as a detective helping us to discover and appreciate the ordered patterns by which everything is held together. More and more we see the balance and purpose of God’s mind and heart as it increasingly uncovers the mysteries of how the visible structures and the invisible forces work together and reveal His amazing mind.

Psalm 91 is a mind and heart revelation from the Spirit. It’s an intertwined series of touches between the mind’s visible and invisible perceptions, the heart’s emotion and the spirit’s sensitivity. He uses visible images to carry spiritual realities. It gives us an extraordinary peek into the mind of the Creator, the spiritual source of physical Creation.

Think about it.

We have yet to comprehend the smallest and the largest entities in all of existence. One thing is evident. The order, connection and balance in the structure of existence points to an intellect of infinite creative skill, design and power beyond the comprehension of human beings. Yet He has afforded us a relationship with Him to regain our connection with Him. It is His spiritual nature out of which all Creation has come and it is the spiritual flaw in us, sin, that has thrown us out of our spiritual grasp of what His Creation means.

That fact is true.

We live in the land of Nod, east of Eden, the spiritual desert, the wilderness within and without. As a result, since Adam, self-preservation from a physical perspective has been our orientation. We think more about our physical health and survival than we do about our spiritual health and eternity. The reason Jesus came was to get us to be spiritually reoriented in mind, heart and spirit. Everything we can see, feel, hear, taste, smell and touch has a spiritual counterpart. So every physical picture in this Psalm and all the Psalms shoulder a spiritual meaning. Let the Holy Spirit open them for you.

As we begin to think like Jesus thinks and open ourselves in faith to Him, the Holy Spirit becomes our spark, our electricity, our gravity and our magnetism. That’s His purpose in our lives.

Paul says it so wonderfully in 1Corinthinas 13. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me…” and concludes that three spiritual qualities define us---faith, hope and love. His whole thrust was to be transformed by the renewal of the mind, that is, to think spiritually (Rom.12:2). So let me offer this parallel:

The magnetism of the Holy Spirit draws us and makes us one with Jesus. The gravity of the Holy Spirit keeps us grounded in Jesus. The Bible is the power plant, the grid system and the wiring that carries the electricity of the Holy Spirit into the world. Churches are the gathered believers, the generating stations, called to light up the world. Each of us is a light bulb. The question is, are we plugged in?