Of Time and a Season Part 11

[HKHaugan]

Of Time and a Season Part 11

“…a time to search and a time to give up…”

This raises an immediate question that King David brought up to the Lord, “What is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him (Ps.8:4)?”

The ‘Great Search’ is man’s quest for an identity, a destination and a way to get there. Three questions are an everyday search for meaning: Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? Jesus encourages the search when He says, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:  For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened (Mt.7:7-8).”

Every person has a built-in need to search. That need arises from a three-fold condition, our separation from God, our separation from others and the aloneness we feel in ourselves. in the realization that there is something more than just having a career, a family and relational acceptance and even a religion.  There is more than playing a sport, keeping fit, pursuing a career, taking on a hobby, attending a religious gathering, or whatever else there is out there to choose from.

The ultimate search for everyone is spiritual fulfillment whether they realize it or not. It’s not the outer man, the appearance, the impression we make on others. It’s the sense within our mind and heart that the unseen stuff of life is the most important part of living. No matter how we shake it, the final truth about men and women is that they are spiritual beings. Everything they do is governed by what they can’t see. The whole life process of choice and decision making is invisible. It’s a 24/7 process. There is not a moment of life waking or sleeping that the mind and heart are not at work. People make decisions based on faith in an idea, a process, a goal. Belief, trust and faith are spiritual. The basic question then is, who do I trust in the invisible dimension?

There are built in drives, the drive to be acceptable, to be balanced and stable, to accomplish something not for outside approval but for self-approval, that sense of fulfillment as a person. The yearning for wisdom; the need to be right in how you do things, how you feel and how you make choices and decisions. There is the need for relational satisfaction, being loved and loving, having friends you can trust and a shared freedom of expression without having to feel judgment. The ability to accept warranted criticism. If it is a career, then what you produce has economic and social value. In all of it there is that inner call for integrity, character and confidence. Now here is the great truth in the nature of the search. The search is ultimately, completely and definitively spiritual. These are all invisible values, drives and initiatives you take in the mind and heart motivated by the spirit in you.

Here is the challenge in the search. Success in all these things is a drive that, outside of God, will end in despair, disappointment and disillusion. If we accept this as a spiritual challenge, searching will lead us down different paths. Religion will fail. Extended education and career goals depend on other’s acceptance and game playing in the process. Philosophy and psychological programming always increase the problem of unresolved inner issues. We cannot escape our imperfections, our emotional imbalance, our lack of universal knowledge and the problem of physical death. Anything less than a spiritual relationship with God will leave you alone in the frustration of failure because of the lack of spiritual grounding.  All that is unseen is spiritual and spirituality is relational, a spiritual building block freely given through faith in God. That’s what we were made for.

Now here is a bottom-line consideration. The mind with good intention, the well-intended heart, the self-excusing spirit, ‘I do make mistakes, but I’m really a good person’ attitude is really the bleating of aloneness. If I have to make excuses, justifying myself all the time, I am only fooling myself. I need an outside source; a personal relationship I can trust with a person I can trust. Who better than Jesus? He died and rose from the dead to show that perfection, honesty and confidence that only a spiritual relationship with His Father could achieve. He came to show that the spiritual center in us is where the real action is. It is the search within that brings the Kingdom of God within and life without, family, friends, neighbors, the job fit into the spiritual cover that is faith in God. Jesus is the example of our individual personal existence finding its home base. In other words, He went to the Cross for me. He is not only my ‘Fed-Ex’ to God He is my ‘UPS’ within.

But the search doesn’t stop there. The deeper search takes place in the relationship as I find my need to share the security and relational foundation that changes me. The search is being faithful with the time I’ve been given and growing into the relationship with God in Jesus.“…and a time to give up…”

The giving up comes when you follow all the secular pursuits and they produce nothing but a dead end. Failure is inevitable. It’s not that you give up, it’s that you’re given up. The trophy ends up in a closet, the accumulated wealth ends up in someone else’s bank, the reputation is written in a book that ends on a dusty shelf, the memory of you used and misused by those who never knew you and your bones lie either in cremains or in dirt or in both. That’s the negative giving up.

The positive giving up is at the point of realizing we are all terminal and we give up trying to control our lives and let God take over. That’s the Gospel Jesus came to deliver. Spiritual life is eternal, and it starts with faith in Him. That faith gives up trying to do life according to some cultural standards. We give trying to impress others thinking we are impressing ourselves. We give up trying to be good and letting God be good through us. The time to give up is when we realize the need for the season of faith to take over. Because you and I are unique individuals, our search will always lead to the need for a perfect person. Not a guru, Not some model of goodness. Not a system, a routine or even a formula. God is relational. We give up the non-relational for the perfect relational Person, Jesus. Who else fits that description? All the notable religious figures of history are dead. Jesus is the only one who is alive and ready to come into our spiritual space. When we give up what is taking up that space, the stuff that is not relational, let Jesus control us, that’s when life comes together in the full. When our spiritual space is full of Jesus’ Spirit then eternity begins, a never-ending season.

“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that asks receives; and he that seeks finds; and to him that knocks it shall be opened (Mt.7:7-8).”