Kingdom's Keys Fellowship
Where God's Kingdom Meets Man's Heart.
Purpose, Meaning and Signficance
(When talking to those who don’t believe the following might be of help in your conversation.)
Man asks three questions, Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there?
These are the questions philosophers have pondered over the centuries. The problem is that the answers depend on guessing, pondering, speculating, intuiting and making conclusions based on experience. Our lives are incomplete indicating there must be a completeness. Our lives are imperfect reflecting the idea of perfection. Our lives are temporary suggesting an existing permanency. There is more to life than life.
The best we can do is to observe that there is within us a quest to understand, a curiosity about what we can’t see, a desire to control circumstance, an innate sense of morality and a longing for a life beyond the one we know.
Further there is an inner yearning for love, acceptance, for purpose, for accomplishment, for wisdom, for direction, for security and for handling our aloneness.
What we know is that we have been thrust into a world where the context of our lives is self-conscious, relational and temporary. There is birth, life and death. There is a beginning and an end and what happens in between. What happens in between is where we are.
Our observation, our yearning and our knowing come in the three-piece suit of our mind, our heart and our spirit, realities blended within a visible physical body intermingled with similar beings in a huge seemingly endless physical universe.
With our mind we believe in something that will enable us to process our experience, sort it out, organize, plan and set priorities.
With our heart we trust. We trust ‘our gut,’ we feel, we long, we desire, we reach, we yearn for peace within and struggle against conflict without.
With our spirit we have faith that somehow, someway, somewhere, that in which we center our belief and trust will work for us. Faith is our motivator. Faith is what drives the engine we call our body. Faith moves our mind, guides our heart and inspires our spirit to action.
All of what has been said so far is common to all humanity. It is the common base of operation, our common means to consider the answers to the questions initially posed here. Every human being starts with these realities. The larger question that faces us is why? Why all of this existence, experience and exercise? Isn’t it extreme, extensive and exhausting?
What we want to grasp is that the whole process is an invisible personal and interpersonal exchange taking place in the framework of a physical body in a physical universe.
Three things stand before us as we approach the idea of why. First, existence is immense. Existence is bigger than any one of us and bigger than all of us. There is no way we can ponder, intuit, speculate, guess or reason the source of it all, know our meaning and purpose within it or determine where it all ends.
Second, we can’t even understand all the workings of ourselves, the constant movement of the mind and its motivations, the intricacies of our bodies and the way we describe the heart and the inner complexities of our emotions. Add to this the whole realm of our invisible processes like choice, decision-making, morality, the quest for knowledge, the need for acceptance, love and achievement in the vast sea of spiritual reality.
Third, pride. As that great American philosopher Clint Eastwood has said, “A man has got to know his limitations.” Man will never know, grasp and get his mind around the fact of visible and invisible reality. Live with it, accept it, that’s the way it is. There isn’t one person who can even get his mind around himself. If he could he wouldn’t be curious, asking questions, striving day after day, working to survive, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, giving birth, living life, finally dying and trying to understand it all. Man must come to the point of asking himself where he is, why he is here and where he is headed. So much of what is called religion is man’s attempt to control all of these ever-present factors. But there is far more than religion awaiting the one who takes another step. What, when, where, how and why is that step? Hold on.
The obvious, man’s limitations, indicates he must reach beyond himself, his questioning mind, his yearning heart and his hungering spirit. He has no choice but to take a major leap into the realm of the invisible with the built in invisible tools given him at birth---belief, faith and trust. No matter who you are, the way human beings live is believing with our minds in some form of behavior that supports our physical existence, trusting in our hearts that it will work and having faith to apply and act out its principles every day. These basic driving forces in every human being are invisible and they are employed constantly.
Now if there are those who think that what has been said so far doesn’t apply to them then they have a serious case of self-denialitis. Let’s go on anyway.
If we turn again to the immensity and infinitesimal complex reality of the inner and outer environment of our personal humanity we cannot deny the order in which it all exists. In the midst of it all each of us is a self-conscious, searching, probing individual making internal decisions living out what we believe makes sense out of it all. There is not a moment when we are not making choices in belief, trust and faith. Even in our sleep we dream exaggerated images of conclusions about our experience.
One thing really stands out, something common to each of us, we are very individual, personal and uniquely self-conscious. No one can think like we do. No one can read our minds or know what lies within the mind, heart and spirit of another. We can guess, assume, analyze and conclude but we can’t know. We don’t even really know ourselves. The heart of the matter is this, every individual wading through this vast invisible spectrum of seen and unseen reality awaits what is revealed from without. It is a constant process of defining and redefining on the basis of momentary needs or long-term values, or both, depending on their varying degrees of importance.
Revelation is the key to knowing, understanding and gaining a foothold in the broad arena of knowing. Relationships, our major human involvement, are established on what is revealed and then processed. Until we reach out from within and risk weighing what is revealed we remain a lonely, undefined and restless being putting off the increasing pressure of our deepest needs. The very fact we have needs is in itself a factor pointing to our dependency on revelation.
It is in this core outside need for revelation that the mind, heart and spirit of the individual must face its tentative, precarious temporary existence between birth and death and what we do with the in-between. Because we are physically time and space limited persons, because we are limited in our minds, hearts, spirits and the bodies that express them, our incompleteness and imperfections demand we look without for a revelation we can believe, trust and have faith in. We need something more perfect, more complete and more energizing than what we possess.
Into this internal maze we are asked to let what is outside of us embrace our minds, get around our minds, be a non-threatening reality that embraces us in every detail both known and unknown within. It must embrace our frailty, our fears, our deepest questions, our inconsistencies, our dreams and insecurities bringing order for the mind, balance for the heart and energy to our spirit.
Here we introduce the idea of Jesus as the one person who fits perfectly into the incompleteness and imperfections of a limited humanity to correct its fault lines. Self-consciousness and the lonely journey it plods is embraced by Him, traced by Him and replaced by Him. His humanity from birth through life and death into His Resurrection is the promise that with Him our growth and expansion of being a self, an aware self, a relational self, a spiritual self, a thinking self, an emotional self whose existence will grow and expand forever. He is a self in complete and perfect balance. He is a self anyone can trust from without to live within. He is an example of attitude, emotions, reason and being in never ending supportive presence.
When considering what existence is all about, it’s about Him and what He brings in terms of personal fulfillment. The moment we step into that vast invisible reality He is there to guide us on a daily unseen path. We not only become what humanity is meant to be but we become completely self-conscious because His consciousness dwells in us when our minds believe in Him, our heart trusts Him and our spirit is moved by His Spirit. His Word becomes our byword. His thoughts ours and His love and grace thrust us forward into that experience of having the answers unfold day-by-day and experience-by-experience. The dark of our self-centeredness, pride and fear are exposed to His light and we are healed.
Yes, there are other offerings out there that may seek to pass as revelation but which of them has borne the Cross, died personally for each one of us and risen from the dead to satisfy our deepest personal fears. The revelation Jesus brings is from the spiritual realm proven by the Resurrection of His dead body and the faith He had to endure the Cross and its hideous violent death, which He went through to touch our mind, hearts and spirits.
1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. (Ps.23 KJV)
1 The Lord is my shepherd. He gives me everything I need.
2 He lets me lie down in fields of green grass.
He leads me beside quiet waters.
3 He gives me new strength.
He guides me in the right paths
for the honor of his name.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid.
You are with me.
Your shepherd's rod and staff
comfort me.
5 You prepare a feast for me
right in front of my enemies.
You pour oil on my head.
My cup runs over.
6 I am sure that your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life.
And I will live in the house of the Lord
forever. (Ps.23 NIRV)
Man asks three questions, Who am I? Where am I going? How am I going to get there?
These are the questions philosophers have pondered over the centuries. The problem is that the answers depend on guessing, pondering, speculating, intuiting and making conclusions based on experience. Our lives are incomplete indicating there must be a completeness. Our lives are imperfect reflecting the idea of perfection. Our lives are temporary suggesting an existing permanency. There is more to life than life.
The best we can do is to observe that there is within us a quest to understand, a curiosity about what we can’t see, a desire to control circumstance, an innate sense of morality and a longing for a life beyond the one we know.
Further there is an inner yearning for love, acceptance, for purpose, for accomplishment, for wisdom, for direction, for security and for handling our aloneness.
What we know is that we have been thrust into a world where the context of our lives is self-conscious, relational and temporary. There is birth, life and death. There is a beginning and an end and what happens in between. What happens in between is where we are.
Our observation, our yearning and our knowing come in the three-piece suit of our mind, our heart and our spirit, realities blended within a visible physical body intermingled with similar beings in a huge seemingly endless physical universe.
With our mind we believe in something that will enable us to process our experience, sort it out, organize, plan and set priorities.
With our heart we trust. We trust ‘our gut,’ we feel, we long, we desire, we reach, we yearn for peace within and struggle against conflict without.
With our spirit we have faith that somehow, someway, somewhere, that in which we center our belief and trust will work for us. Faith is our motivator. Faith is what drives the engine we call our body. Faith moves our mind, guides our heart and inspires our spirit to action.
All of what has been said so far is common to all humanity. It is the common base of operation, our common means to consider the answers to the questions initially posed here. Every human being starts with these realities. The larger question that faces us is why? Why all of this existence, experience and exercise? Isn’t it extreme, extensive and exhausting?
What we want to grasp is that the whole process is an invisible personal and interpersonal exchange taking place in the framework of a physical body in a physical universe.
Three things stand before us as we approach the idea of why. First, existence is immense. Existence is bigger than any one of us and bigger than all of us. There is no way we can ponder, intuit, speculate, guess or reason the source of it all, know our meaning and purpose within it or determine where it all ends.
Second, we can’t even understand all the workings of ourselves, the constant movement of the mind and its motivations, the intricacies of our bodies and the way we describe the heart and the inner complexities of our emotions. Add to this the whole realm of our invisible processes like choice, decision-making, morality, the quest for knowledge, the need for acceptance, love and achievement in the vast sea of spiritual reality.
Third, pride. As that great American philosopher Clint Eastwood has said, “A man has got to know his limitations.” Man will never know, grasp and get his mind around the fact of visible and invisible reality. Live with it, accept it, that’s the way it is. There isn’t one person who can even get his mind around himself. If he could he wouldn’t be curious, asking questions, striving day after day, working to survive, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, giving birth, living life, finally dying and trying to understand it all. Man must come to the point of asking himself where he is, why he is here and where he is headed. So much of what is called religion is man’s attempt to control all of these ever-present factors. But there is far more than religion awaiting the one who takes another step. What, when, where, how and why is that step? Hold on.
The obvious, man’s limitations, indicates he must reach beyond himself, his questioning mind, his yearning heart and his hungering spirit. He has no choice but to take a major leap into the realm of the invisible with the built in invisible tools given him at birth---belief, faith and trust. No matter who you are, the way human beings live is believing with our minds in some form of behavior that supports our physical existence, trusting in our hearts that it will work and having faith to apply and act out its principles every day. These basic driving forces in every human being are invisible and they are employed constantly.
Now if there are those who think that what has been said so far doesn’t apply to them then they have a serious case of self-denialitis. Let’s go on anyway.
If we turn again to the immensity and infinitesimal complex reality of the inner and outer environment of our personal humanity we cannot deny the order in which it all exists. In the midst of it all each of us is a self-conscious, searching, probing individual making internal decisions living out what we believe makes sense out of it all. There is not a moment when we are not making choices in belief, trust and faith. Even in our sleep we dream exaggerated images of conclusions about our experience.
One thing really stands out, something common to each of us, we are very individual, personal and uniquely self-conscious. No one can think like we do. No one can read our minds or know what lies within the mind, heart and spirit of another. We can guess, assume, analyze and conclude but we can’t know. We don’t even really know ourselves. The heart of the matter is this, every individual wading through this vast invisible spectrum of seen and unseen reality awaits what is revealed from without. It is a constant process of defining and redefining on the basis of momentary needs or long-term values, or both, depending on their varying degrees of importance.
Revelation is the key to knowing, understanding and gaining a foothold in the broad arena of knowing. Relationships, our major human involvement, are established on what is revealed and then processed. Until we reach out from within and risk weighing what is revealed we remain a lonely, undefined and restless being putting off the increasing pressure of our deepest needs. The very fact we have needs is in itself a factor pointing to our dependency on revelation.
It is in this core outside need for revelation that the mind, heart and spirit of the individual must face its tentative, precarious temporary existence between birth and death and what we do with the in-between. Because we are physically time and space limited persons, because we are limited in our minds, hearts, spirits and the bodies that express them, our incompleteness and imperfections demand we look without for a revelation we can believe, trust and have faith in. We need something more perfect, more complete and more energizing than what we possess.
Into this internal maze we are asked to let what is outside of us embrace our minds, get around our minds, be a non-threatening reality that embraces us in every detail both known and unknown within. It must embrace our frailty, our fears, our deepest questions, our inconsistencies, our dreams and insecurities bringing order for the mind, balance for the heart and energy to our spirit.
Here we introduce the idea of Jesus as the one person who fits perfectly into the incompleteness and imperfections of a limited humanity to correct its fault lines. Self-consciousness and the lonely journey it plods is embraced by Him, traced by Him and replaced by Him. His humanity from birth through life and death into His Resurrection is the promise that with Him our growth and expansion of being a self, an aware self, a relational self, a spiritual self, a thinking self, an emotional self whose existence will grow and expand forever. He is a self in complete and perfect balance. He is a self anyone can trust from without to live within. He is an example of attitude, emotions, reason and being in never ending supportive presence.
When considering what existence is all about, it’s about Him and what He brings in terms of personal fulfillment. The moment we step into that vast invisible reality He is there to guide us on a daily unseen path. We not only become what humanity is meant to be but we become completely self-conscious because His consciousness dwells in us when our minds believe in Him, our heart trusts Him and our spirit is moved by His Spirit. His Word becomes our byword. His thoughts ours and His love and grace thrust us forward into that experience of having the answers unfold day-by-day and experience-by-experience. The dark of our self-centeredness, pride and fear are exposed to His light and we are healed.
Yes, there are other offerings out there that may seek to pass as revelation but which of them has borne the Cross, died personally for each one of us and risen from the dead to satisfy our deepest personal fears. The revelation Jesus brings is from the spiritual realm proven by the Resurrection of His dead body and the faith He had to endure the Cross and its hideous violent death, which He went through to touch our mind, hearts and spirits.
1The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever. (Ps.23 KJV)
1 The Lord is my shepherd. He gives me everything I need.
2 He lets me lie down in fields of green grass.
He leads me beside quiet waters.
3 He gives me new strength.
He guides me in the right paths
for the honor of his name.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid.
You are with me.
Your shepherd's rod and staff
comfort me.
5 You prepare a feast for me
right in front of my enemies.
You pour oil on my head.
My cup runs over.
6 I am sure that your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life.
And I will live in the house of the Lord
forever. (Ps.23 NIRV)
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