The Nitty Gritty

[HKHaugan]

The Nitty-Gritty 

From last time may this be quoted, “If we are hurt by someone, what do we remember first, the pain or the appearance of the one who hurt us?  Don’t we tend to see others with the same appearance as the enemy?  Judgment and its spiritual decline.   It’s not just limited to appearance (they’re all like that) but more subtle within.  It can be social standing (envy?), accomplishment (jealousy?), insult (pride?), beauty (lust?), threat (hate?), behavior (judgment?), name your poison.  Some are more intense or less intense in us.  This is how we develop attitudes that have negative spirits fueling them.  Spiritude is given to replace them.”

“For instance, isn’t gossip really bearing false witness (9th Commandment?), blaming others to feel better about self? Sharing opinion rather than fact or truth?  The reality of our sin driven human nature is that the memory of our past is full of embellishment, the way we wanted to see our world, our experience of people and not the way they really were.  We can hardly get yesterday right.  All this is the heart processing life.  Is it any wonder the Father sent His Son Jesus to straighten us out and had to suffer death to get the point across on the Cross?  Then His selection of perfection in the Resurrection to assure us of Him being the Truth, the real Truth and nothing but the Truth?  And His final gift, to heal the rift and make the shift, the Spirit of Truth?”

 Our primary treasure from Heaven is the Holy Spirit.  With the Holy Spirit everything spiritual begins to blossom.  Like Spring buds opened by the sun, people take on a different look.  The Bible becomes His treasury.  Within it everyone is an image of God.  Life takes on a sequence of continuing insights.   Gaze in the mirror and we look different.  Ponder our past life and it takes on a clearer picture of where we’re headed.  Instead of a tomb filled with guilt, remorse and regret, a door opens to a new room of God’s acceptance, free to look forward to what we are being led out of and into.  Good and evil are no longer concepts hiding in the closet of personal control.  We can see them and know how to embrace them, clearly denying the one and stepping forward into the other.  That’s Holy Spirit power.

Keeping in step with the Holy Spirit is no longer driven by fear as we walk the tense, taught, tightrope of acceptance by others.  Instead of hesitant personal assessment, we know to whom we belong.  Unease becomes the ease of confidence He gives.  Our alertness is no longer anxious. Rather, it is based on knowing the grace and truth the Spirit covers us with from God’s Word.  We give spiritual responses instead of fearful responses.  Apply the Holy Spirit in thought and you have the resurrection of meaning given to the words we speak, the feelings we have and the path we walk.  Therefore, we look to the Holy Spirit to assume His rightful place in the mind and heart. The Holy Spirit brings the Lord Jesus and His will to bear wherever we are.  He lifts the Lord before us as we walk from event to event and person to person.  The unexpected becomes the expected.  Every encounter is an opportunity not a dread.  Circumstance carries a blessing not a curse. 

 The Holy Spirit is the source of inner peace.  This brings us into the subject of anxiety, worry, apprehension, trepidation, foreboding and their spirit, fear (Mt.6:22-34).  The ultimate fear of course is death.  But all the subsidiaries fear brings are in the moments of our weaknesses.  Where our weaknesses arise is the moment we are faced with choice.  Our fear meter will register when the object of any fear becomes evident.  Family registers high when jobs hang in the balance, relational conflicts emerge, or we find ourselves in any physical or emotionally precarious situation.

 But pull back for a moment and consider the passage that precedes this one on worry (6:22 on).  It concerns wealth, money, fortune, inheritance, savings, insurance, investments and property.  These are the treasures hat occupy the culture around us.  These are conditioned in us from the time we are born.  We see our parents struggling to make enough for us to live on.  The need for clothes, food, rent or ownership of a properly equipped home, cars, educational expense, pleasure, vacations.  These are the treasures flashing at us on TV screens, computers and printed media.  Jesus says we can’t serve two masters.  We will hate one and love the other, be devoted to one and despise the other. The bottom line He says is this, “You cannot serve both God and money.” 

 In our culture it is material wealth versus spiritual reality.  The pull of the visible outranks the pull of the spiritual.  What is visible has a bigger draw than the invisible.  Sports stadiums outdraw spiritual venues.  Sporty clothes draw more attention than plain clothes.  Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.  Youth trumps age.  Slender neutralizes weight.  Brains and brawn are tied.    Strength strangles weakness.  Having an angle beats being a square.  ‘One-upsmanship’ quiets the timid.  However, the temporary value may dominate the moment, but the permanent value wins the prize.