Putting Our Security System to Work

[HKHaugan]

Faith 19 Putting Our Security System to Work

The security system we have been talking about is far more than just maintaining mere physical, economic and social survival. We are not here just to have the right belief and go home, shut the garage door and feel complacently self- assured. As the writer of Ecclesiastes assures us, that is simply ‘chasing after wind.’ Real honest-to-goodness life is a daily spiritual awareness of God living in others and us and aware of how He is working all around us. It is an awareness of self, a self made in the image of God, with a heart, spirit and mind created in each of us by God whose expansive eternal being is revealing a life of endless possibilities in Him.

Life is the awareness of being a thinking, feeling, spiritual person who is being energized by God to relate to Him and others. It is a triangular experience involving God, others and self sharing who and what we are. Our spiritual life includes these but goes beyond by being creative, producing, accomplishing while loving, caring, reaching out, helping others, seeing and hearing spiritually. What makes it all work is experiencing God within who makes sense of everything without. This life beyond life is exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit that define us, grow us and serve others as we go. Life is faith, hope, truth and love drawing us out of ourselves into a world the Lord has called us to reconcile to Him. It is the world of our personal and interpersonal everyday encounters. Life is about the three of us, God, you and me---forever.

Because life is personal, interpersonal, spiritual, present and eternal, the Lord Jesus has given us a commandment that envelops the totality of our being, our heart, spirit and mind. Let’s repeat it, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments (Mt.22:37-40 NIV)." So everything that requires structure and its maintenance in every area of existence hangs on these two commandments. And everything that is in any way prophetic, starting with the Prophets, hangs on these two commandments.

God’s gift of spiritual life as He gives it is why we call the Great Commandment great. It is an inclusive embrace with an exclusive message. Inclusive because its I directed at every human being. Exclusive because there is nothing else like. it. Our God loves everyone personally and He has provided His Son Jesus as the only way to experience the life He has planned for everyone. Therein lies its greatness. Our whole being has a great purpose and a great role centered in, modeled in and fulfilled in Jesus, God the Son, the greatest Person who has ever lived on this planet.

Just the idea of greatness is how we perceive something expansive that goes beyond the moment; before, during and after every moment. Greatness is how we categorize something we believe is lasting in quality. There’s an absolute about it. It’s something that not only transcends the moment but defines the moment, every next moment, as a great moment because a great God is involved and present in it. A great Father, a great Son and a great Holy Spirit hover over us ready to fill every next moment with their greatness. Jesus came to show that God is making humanity great again.

Every next moment is, and hopefully becomes, a part of our security system as we ready ourselves for the great experience our great God prepares for each of us. This is why the Message Bible’s paraphrase has a ‘great’ way of expressing The Great Commandment, “"'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them (Mt.22:37-40 The Message)." It calls for a heart to passionately reach for God and the hearts of others. It calls for a spirit to pray fervently and constantly for the conquest of personal sin and the empowering of the Holy Spirit for ministry and mission. It calls us to submerge our mind, all our thinking, learning and reasoning capacities, into the conscious service of the Lord giving ‘a reason for the hope that is in you (1Peter 3:15 NKJV).’

John Stott was always a man of great spiritual insight and wisdom. The Holy Spirit gifted him with a special anointing for explaining Scripture. The following quote from a book of his illustrates the two spiritual requisites necessary when Scriptural truth is approached:

“The human mind is both finite and fallen, and will neither understand nor believe without the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. It is not only necessary that he should have given an objective revelation. We need his subjective illumination too. If I were to take a blindfold man to the ceremony of unveiling of some stone tablet, two processes would be necessary before he could read the inscription. First, the tablet must be unveiled (and of course ‘revelation’ means unveiling). Second, the bandage must be taken from his eyes. Similarly, it is not enough that God through his Spirit has unveiled the truth in Christ. The veil must be removed from our eyes as well. ( John Stott–From Fundamentalism and Evangelism. London: Crusade Booklets, 1956; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959 p. 26.)”

Our task is to be ready to submit with all our heart, spirit and mind immersed in the consciousness of the Lord’s Presence to help remove the veils of those to whom He has led us. That's our mission. But it's one thing to believe in Jesus, it is another to trust Him. If we think and say we trust Him there is a way to measure the depth of our belief and trust. That measure for our belief and trust is faith, the active sharing of Jesus in the world of people among whom we live. Our discipleship is not complete without consciously serving Him, bringing Him into our conversations, seeking ways to get involved with those who don't know Him and let them know about Him. Faith is the work of the Holy Spirit the Lord has given us to be like Him.