The Call to Think Spiritually

[HKHaugan]

When Jesus said ‘You must be born again’ this was no lighthearted suggestion to kind of mull over the philosophical or religious systems available in the supermarket of opinion. It was a radical leap into the invisible, the unseen, the dimension outside of one’s control. It was a leap into seeing things from a new perspective only guessed at in the past.

In our time the phrase ‘born again’ is used in many areas like when you hear a person is a ‘born again musician, athlete, politician,’ someone shifting from one field to the other. Pick a field and apply the term. It signifies a realization and change of direction. That part is right. But even that is limited to what the mind chooses to do with what is available in the material sphere.

When Jesus uses it we are invited into a wholly different realm of thought, emotion, spirit and expanding experience. It is a spiritual realm. It is beyond anything taking place in the individual before submission to it. It means a total shift of mind, heart and spirit into another dimension over which we have no control, the spiritual. It is a dimension that can only be understood through Him. In fact only Jesus can be our guide in it because of our inability to make that leap. You see everything we see and do in terms of our everyday living experience is motivated by what we can’t see. We live in the unseen all the time. We make choices and decisions each of which is carried on in unseen reality and believe me the unseen is real. The entire process of life in this world is an arena of answering, ‘What should I do? and ‘Is it right or wrong?’ all of which are the unseen at work in the seen.

Human beings always knew the unseen dimension is there and so construct self-satisfying systems of thought and religion to handle their basic fear of the unknown. Philosophy became an intellectual pursuit limited to the mind that tried to make the mind a god but was never able to handle the heart and spirit. Psychology has become a rampant self-justifying system with an emotional trajectory for the heart. It too is still rooted in trying to understand inner frustration and fear. Religion was a pursuit into idolatry, that is, making idols to answer fear of the unknown. Religion was and still is guesswork, guesswork predicated on analyzing experience of the unseen and building systems of thought and practice to control how we approach the unseen.

But Jesus brings something entirely new. He says, ‘You must be born again.’ So what makes Jesus’ approach different? What is this ‘born again’ business all about? Apparently religion takes a close stab at getting into the spiritual dimension but misses it because of the nature of what the unseen consists. Religion has moral principles, personal and interpersonal standards of behavior, intellectual pursuits and sacrificial concepts and practices.

Jesus, however, centers all unseen experience and its understanding in Himself. He is the foundation through whom everything both visible and invisible has come into existence. And He offers us a personal relationship with Him. This existence is identifiable in three ways. It is first personal. It defines who and what controls existence, namely God, as well as who and what we are, images of Him.

Second, it is spiritual. Everything we can see was created by God and points to Him. The unseen is totally spiritual in terms of its origin, its control and its destiny. It has two internal realities, good and evil, the moral and immoral, light and darkness, Heaven and hell. In it the devil is the prince of darkness who controls many evil spirits and demons. In the other God is the majesty of Heaven and is in total control of the entire spiritual and physical existence. The destiny of evil and the evil one is their death.

Third, it is relational. The spiritual dimension is built to be relational, an interchange between God and between those created in His image. He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit in perfect and total harmony who has created us to be like Him, one individual with mind, heart and spirit. Heaven is an eternal relational experience centered in the presence of Jesus, God the Son.

Now back to being ‘born again.’

We have a spiritual problem. It is called sin. Sin works to deny we are images of God, to rebel against the idea and reality of God and take control of our lives. Sin is the blockade to keep God out of the mind, the heart and the spirit of human beings. It has to dealt with. Sin is the spirit of the devil who tries to blur our God-image by opening the door to the invasion of evil spirits that attack our mind, heart and spirit to keep us separated from the God our Creator. The spirits of pride, fear, doubt, division, suspicion, greed to name a few systematically work on the self-centeredness that sin breeds to undermine us as we attempt to deal with the unseen. Fear and pride are the worst and dominate much of our behavior.

The only answer to all this is to receive Jesus as the One who saves us from the unseen attacker and his allies in the unseen. He can do this because that unseen attacker used his entire arsenal of hostility and death against Jesus but Jesus not only survived them He was victoriously risen from the dead and sits on God’s throne in Heaven to direct the entire traffic of existence. All accomplished by the Holy Spirit who Jesus gives us when we let Him become our Lord in the unseen. This is what it means to be ‘born again.’ We are born spiritual by the power of the Holy Spirit when we receive Jesus as our personal Lord in the unseen dimension. He becomes our guide, our warrior, our protector, our leader and our deliverer through this dark world.

Further, we become His missionaries, His ambassadors, His witnesses, His physical Body to bring the truth of this unseen dimension to bear on every life in this world that they too may find their minds, hearts and spirits reborn, renewed, reshaped, rebuilt and reenergized to be the spiritual testimonies to eternal truth.

Finally, it is all about Jesus, the Kingdom of God and finding our purpose and meaning for the sake of Him who died for us and for those yet to see Him as their Savior and Lord in the eternal unseen dimension.

This is our calling to think spiritually and to act spiritually in Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

“16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God (John3:16-21 NIV).”