If You Don't Start Spiritually, You Don't Start

[HKHaugan]

If You Don’t Start With the Spirit, You Don’t Start

 One primary truth before we begin any discussion, teaching or explanation about human life:  God is Spirit.  Therefore, the entire process of life as we know it began spiritually, functions spiritually and has a spiritual purpose.  If we have a scientific appraisal of physical existence it gives us only half of the story, half of the picture and half of our personal experience in it. 

 The same can be said if we approach the subject philosophically.  Delving into the nature of mankind, speculating about its individual meaning for us, looking for a systematic understanding of why we are here, why people do what they do and what might be the best way to live. 

 Religion offers a closer look since it does purport to answer theological questions about the existence of higher powers and their relevance to people.  But usually religion ends up with systems over which special human beings stand as the final authorities in their dispensation.  Science, philosophy and religion are not ends in themselves.  Apart from God who gave them existence they are like bottles without caps.  Eventually their contents evaporate, and they are discarded.

 Ultimately however, the other half is personal and relational.  Every human being has to make their own personal decision about their own existence and how to live it out.  Each of us are filled with questions about who we are, why we are here and our destiny. The is the real other half and it is invisible, unseen and processed in the individual heart and mind by the spirit in each. 

 So, half of our experience is what we can see but the other half is what we can’t see.  What we can’t see determines what we do with what we can see.  It’s not rocket science here.  Since the source of all existence is unseen, doesn’t it follow logically that the most important part is the unseen?  The best way to move within the unseen is to have a foundation you can trust.  The basic questions that involve meaning, purpose, direction and motivation deal with this unseen half in us.  Then there is within each the concern for what is good, better and best as opposed to what is bad, worse and worst.  Everyone has a moral awareness.  Everyone has a sense of eternity wondering what and where it is.  Everyone knows within there is more than what they can see and feel.

 Here are some randomly chosen Google quotes from searching hearts: “My entire life I wanted to become a doctor.”  “I coulda been someone.  I coulda been a contenda.”  “Life is just the attitudes and  opinions of others.” “Who am I going to become?”  “I cannot write an essay about WHO I’M GOING TO BECOME when i’m just figuring out WHO I AM….”  ““It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.”   “To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.” 

 They  seem like half full glasses waiting to be filled.  In each of these is the secular awareness that we each need a purpose and a way to live it.  There is a good and bad way to think.  In them there can be seen a search for an identity.  There is little sense of who, what, why or where they are.  There is a sense of destiny, of eternity, yet only undefinable. 

 As believers in Jesus we have an identity and purpose.  Jesus is the center of the way we process life given us.  We have an individual sense of our place in the experience and atmosphere of an eternal personal God.  We have meaning, direction and an identity that are relational with God making us relationally self-conscious and complete.  We are spiritually unique children of God.  We have a purpose.  Made in His image, we live to serve God and all those around us.  We have meaning.  We are created to live spiritually, personally and relationally.  We have direction.  We have a way, a truth and a life.  We have God’s Word that is our daily guide to live as a person in a spiritual relationship with God and others.  We have the Lord Jesus as the Person we accept in our hearts to lead us.  We have the Holy Spirit to counsel us moment by moment.  We are moving forward every day toward a fulfillment in God that lasts forever.   It’s all about what God did in His Son Jesus, our Savior and Lord.  There is no longer distance between knowing and not knowing what we are about. 

 Our personal life is a daily faith walk with Jesus.  Like all human beings we walk into each unknown future experience knowing we are going to have to make choices and decisions, but never alone.  We believe and trust in a very personal God who loves us.  He is God, the Creator of the seen and the unseen.  We have His Holy Spirit using His Word to clear a path for us through the unseen, nurturing our relationship with the Lord Jesus and the Father to be a witness in what is seen. 

 Here is what we believe and trust about Jesus:

 Jesus was conceived by the Spirit

Jesus was directed by the Spirit

Jesus lived by faith through the Spirit

Jesus went to the Cross in faith and the Spirit raised Him from the dead

Jesus reigns in the Spirit

Jesus make Himself present in us by the Spirit

Jesus will raise each of us to live eternally through the Spirit

 Everything exists in a spiritually relational pattern.  Organic and inorganic matter fit together in a relational pattern wherein each needs the other.  The relationship between science and the spiritual gives us the foundation to understand how Creation works.  The spiritual gives us the reason why it works and the part we play in it.  This means we have a physical responsibility to probe it and understand how it works and the spiritual responsibility to use what we find properly. 

 All of this makes the Cross of Jesus far more meaningful.  Jesus died to fulfill its meaning and how we view that in which we live.  It gives us a broader view of material and spiritual existence.  The Cross is the background for what we have been given; our bodies and the universal environment in which we live.  The shadow of the Cross falls across the landscape of our existence.  It calls us to the responsibility of honoring the relationship we have with our Creator (our vertical call) and the consequent responsibility to honor the physical structure He has given us to live in (our horizontal call).