Switching Places

[HKHaugan]

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul (Mk.8:36)?”

You go to the Kentucky Derby. It's all about the horses but then it's also about the hats and then the bets, the winnings, the horses' next races, the pageantry and the ability to say “I was there for the race.”

You go to the Super Bowl, the World Cup, the Master's, Wimbledon, the Olympics and the College Championships (pick a sport). It's the same. And think of the cost for all of it not to mention the time and energy and we might find ourselves asking “Was it really worth it?”

Less dramatically is to be in a place where an event becomes a media publicized topic of conversation.

Some famous people come to town and a friend asks if you'd like to meet them and you go, shake their hand, say something you hope they'll appreciate and the moment is lost as they continue on to someone else but you have something that gives you another moment to talk about.

Examples of the above: I've shaken the hands of two former U.S. presidents, met Frank Sinatra, been on a TV show for a season, saw Tim Tebow walk into a stadium, ad infinitem. How many of those kinds of things pass our way in the course of our lives? Everyone has some; places we've been, things we have done, interesting characters along the way.

Is life about what I have done and accomplished or is there more or is there something else? All the things mentioned above are not bad in themselves. They can be enjoyable but in what context do we prioritize them? What part do they play in defining who we are and helping others to see themselves as God sees them?

The reason for stating them is how we categorize them, place value on them and their contribution to what we ultimately see as life. Think about everything else we go through from family to town to friends, churches, TV, computer, cell phones, hobbies and how we spend our time. We need to look to our management of life when it comes to being an image of God in a godless society.

As our life experience progresses with time and age the growing awareness of every next moment and event can be a blessing or a curse. A blessing if we accept them as lamps that are lit by the Spirit to see the light the Lord gives you to take hold of the unseen in mind, heart and spirit. They are a curse if we only see them as a past we need to return to to fill the dying moments as the light of this world's life flickers and finally dims to become ashes in the ground. But the Lord gives us another life, a personal spiritual life that is eternal and grows into His Kingdom. No flickering, no dimming, no ashes in the ground.

Switching places is switching from a worldly context to a Jesus context, from being guided by world standards to those Jesus died and rose from death to give you personally that are clearly defined by Scripture. It's moving from trusting secular culture (society shaped by temporary standards) that keeps you in fear of not 'fitting in' to trusting a relationship with Jesus clearly defined by Scripture (eternal spiritual standards). In any secular culture you are always having to adjust to changing values and being alert to what others think you should be. In Jesus you are set free to be what He leads you to be. In Him you are guided by His unchanging values and unchanging love clearly defined by unchanging Scripture. In Him you change from a place of aloneness and fear to a place of relationship and faith.

Therefore switching places opens us to where spiritual sight is insight, wisdom, grace and love. To think spiritually with the mind, to see wisdom take place in the attitude of an open heart and to see the love only God can give in the Spirit, now we are in the freedom for which He made us. You can actually see when a person's heart is touched, see when someone usually rejected is accepted and see His grace in the face of a changed person radiating with knowing. You also can discern the shaky pretense of someone faking their identity to 'fit in', the deceptive cunning of evil that the Spirit lets you discern to not let it grab you. You can see in yourself and others what holds us back and that is aloneness and its fears. Into these the Holy Spirit injects the life of Jesus to sort out what can be used to bring Him into every nook and corner of our experience and the experience of those around us. Everything can be used to show life as it was meant to be, spiritual life, the life of Jesus casting His shadow across our every next moment. And that not only for our sake. It's to share with others.

Your heart and spirit begin and continue to grow as you identify with the truth that pops out at you from the pages of Scripture. It is the defining means to sort out the eternal from the temporary, the real life from the false life, His insight from human outsight, from aloneness to relationship. You are no longer alone. You no longer have to fend for yourself. You no longer have to defend yourself, rationalizing and justifying all that you say and do. Nor do you have to offend to get attention. Fending, defending and offending are defined as you take Jesus seriously and open yourself to the leading of the Spirit. Jesus justifies you through your willingness to believe Him as you move about from one moment to the next.

Past images both good and bad, emotional pain and peace, sorrow, fear and all those tricky avenues down which blow the cold winds of regret, remorse and guilt's reminders. They no longer are your companions. But those pictures begin a slow fade as you allow the image of the Christ to calm the past with His hand of forgiveness and you remember the days of your finding Him when you didn't even know you were searching. It's the image of a crucified and risen Jesus shifting you from death to His life in an ongoing experience as we take up our cross and see Him more clearly walking with us until that day we see Him as He is and we see ourselves as he sees us.

As His shape becomes more detailed in our spiritual sight so the detail of our own reborn self becomes more real. We are reshaped within where we see, think, feel, choose and make decisions. His patterns becomes our patterns. What was once life in this world that ends decomposed in a dirt filled grave is changed to a spiritual reality of never ending growth and relational awareness of God in all the depth He provides for our willingness to let Him happen moment by moment. This is what switching places is all about.

In the next chapter we will look at four statements Jesus makes declaring truth at the deeper levels of our call to be an image of Him.