It’s a Matter of Time (cont.)

[HKHaugan]

When we talk about Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden it is commonly referred to as ‘the Fall.’ From what did they fall and into what? They fell from the open range of an eternal relationship with God into the frightening and lonely limitation of time. This theme of falling from God’s presence is inherited and repeated in generational form. The same dynamics that caused the Fall can be seen ‘time’ and ‘time’ again. One particular episode that typifies the limitation of time is when Esau sells his lifelong birthright for a bowl of instant oatmeal. This theme of satisfying the moment apart from God runs through the entire Bible. It is one of the major flaws in human nature that identifies the presence of sin. It is the key factor in sin’s temptation to do whatever it takes to be in control. Look at the succession of biblical kings and their downfall. For them it was always maintaining momentary control at the expense of God’s eternal values.

If you want to see one of the driving forces in human politics all you have to do is to identify the issues by who wants what right now regardless of what it costs your children’s children in the future. You sacrifice long terms values for short-term results. In our own country right now leadership in every area is making policy in terms of ‘now-pressure’ not the stability of God-ordained eternal principles. And it is the few overriding the values of the many.

The promise of instant gratification was the strategy the devil used against Jesus in the wilderness temptations. The three temptations were aimed at His relationship with His Father. The devil told Him He could have physical, spiritual and world control apart from His Father. And have it immediately, at that moment, right then, when He was at the peak of His physically weakest and personally loneliest moment. But what made Jesus different at that critical moment was, unlike us, His birth and life initiated and sustained by the Holy Spirit in His heart and mind, sinless.

The same Holy Spirit is still hovering, hovering in the hood of our consciousness, the promised Holy Spirit, our birthright to a life that took the Cross of Christ to restore. Our birthright is a timeless relational life of growth, stability and peace. As Jesus put it, “the abundant life.” But sin, that dark spiritual urge to fill the immediate with something that is only temporary, instantaneous, filling only a momentary blank, leaves us only with a taste of eternal emptiness. Three ‘onlys’ on the road to Elvis’ “Only the Lonely.” Our Holy Spirit birthright was restored on the Cross when Jesus sacrificed His life to replace our time with eternity, sin with His righteousness and evil with His life.

It would take generations from Abraham to Jesus before we could grasp what was right there in our hoods, the Holy Spirit hovering, waiting to bring us back to a forever closeness, gently moving the spiritual breezes necessary for our hearts’ recovery. Even when the connect was made in Jesus, when time stood still in the Bethlehem stable, when the Babe grew and offered God’s depth in the simplicity of His life, it would still take choice, free choice, Spirit-empowered choice, faithful choice, to receive a return to the normalcy of God’s eternal Present.

Just what were those breezes? He sent the healing zephyrs of grace, love, mercy, compassion, conviction, repentance, forgiveness, patience and all the fruit of the Spirit. God provided the clothes of His graceful acceptance to cover the nakedness of sin’s self-centered desire. He allowed those generations continual existence until they could be brought back to Him. But that would take time, in fact centuries, until at just the right moment He would come Himself in Jesus to show them the real life they had lost. They would have to know what it meant to live in a wilderness, in a world of brokenness and alienation. Their fall was not just a stumbling, a loss of balance, tripping over a branch in the dark. Their fall was a fall from the spiritual height of oneness with God into the dark cave of aloneness, fear, pride and frustration.

God chose men to walk with Him, men called to be moved by His breezes and start a spiritual family. Men like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David and the prophets. Men who were given a pattern of attitude and behavior shaped by the Law. Men who knew that they were passing on a life of faith in God because the world was corrupt, its people lost and their own imperfections constantly looming before them. They knew what they had lost and they knew that God was preparing them for something deep, personal and heart-mending But they were given only copies and shadows of a personal being, God the Son, who would strike an impersonal world with His restoring personal power. Mankind had fallen to a level that the recovery would have to be in God’s timing not man’s. Again what man had been conditioned by sin to expect was instantaneous satisfaction of perceived needs not long-term heart growth to meet real needs.

It is to this fallen condition that the Scripture speaks with the heartbeat of God. Scripture is the pulse of God beating steadily from His heart to our heart. It is personal, penetrating and persistent. It tracks our hearts, moves our minds and tests out spirits.

More to come.

[jacque Wright]

Right on! But--- would you please be a little more careful running around those mountains. We need you!
Blessings,
Jim and Jacque