In this ‘Out and About’ sequence we have looked at the overall spiritual dimension with its duel experience of God’s light and the devil’s darkness.  For a moment we need to digress into the atmosphere of Jesus’ light.  There are three reasons for this. 

First, Jesus is building in us something that is eternal, our spiritual bodies, “If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body (1Cor.15:44).” 

Second, just as our physical body needs clothes so…

Today I want to hit something special, the spiritual dimension and how we live in it.  We want to see its breadth, our limitations and the resources He has given.  No matter where we are or what we are doing, we are in the midst of unseeable processes and forces that are attempting to shape and manipulate the way we operate in the invisible dimension all around us.  We have already spoken about them from Ephesians 6 as the principalities and powers from the dark world and the spiritual…

For us to apprehend the spiritual dimension in detail and to see our part in it we look at Genesis.  First, we accept that God created the heavens and the earth (Gen.1:1).  Second, the Holy Spirit is hovering ready to go to work (1:2).  Third, God said, “Let there be light.”  That’s where we start.  God has given us the light of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, to see in the unseen.  Peter, James and John saw that light in Jesus’ Transfiguration (Mt.17).  As we have already noted Paul prayed for the…

If you have been following the tack I have taken here, zeroing in on the spiritual dimension, you’ll recognize my emphasis on this dimension being the source of everything that motivates us.  Logically it follows that if everything has a spiritual source then if problems occur in the physical dimension they have a spiritual source and need spiritual correction.  That spiritual correction may lead to insight that enables physical adjustment.  For instance the whole field of medicine is the…

The ‘out and about’ theme is where we are anytime we move from one place to another, one situation to another and one person to another.  Each one demands a response and triggers a reaction.  Three things are happening here, the movement, the trigger and the response.  Motivation is behind all three, motivation to go to a place, motivation in how we respond to the immediacy of a situation when we arrive and motivation in continuing through its resolution or ongoing attention.  Now when I say…

OK---again---repeat after me---“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”  And if you ask me what a spiritual being is and what a human experience is I will tell you.  It is this simply: we come from a spiritual dimension and live in a physical one.  This is God’s revelation to us in Scripture.   It is in God’s Word that understanding finds its home.  It is there definition is born and the thoughts of God become known so that…

In the last writing the emphasis was on motivation.  I concluded what Scripture tells us and that is---Jesus’ motivation for all He did was His Father.  If you count Jesus’ references to His Father in John’s Gospel alone you will find they number 131.  That has to say something about Jesus’ conscious motivation.  The relational emphasis is carried as a command from the Father on two occasions, Jesus’ Baptism (Mt.3:17) and His Transfiguration (Mt.17:5).   In both the Father said Jesus was the…

In a recent meeting of a men’s discussion group someone raised the question about why Jesus died and asked ‘Would you be willing to die for a cause like He did?’  The assumption on the part of the questioner was that Jesus died for a cause.  The questioner obviously missed the meaning of the Cross.  Jesus didn’t die for a cause, ---He died for His Father.  Scripture is clear here. ‘Father, if you are willing take this cup from me; yet not my will, yours be done (Lk.22:42).”  On the Cross He…

“I’ve got things to do and places to be,” you say to yourself.  You make a list, count it twice, check it again and “Oops, I forgot the rice.”  You write it down and rush out the door.  This is the way our day starts a lot of times.  But are we really prepared to walk out the door into the world as it is out there?  What I mean by that is this, are we really ready not only to do what needs to be done in the routine of daily life but are we really prepared for the spiritual dimension behind…

“For we are God’s workmanship, created to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do (Eph.2:10 NIV).”

What I like about this verse is its no nonsense declaration of what God is up to, of how Jesus is our salvation, the way the Holy Spirit gives us direct access to the Father and our personal part and purpose in His plan.  He has invested His Son’s life in us.  It is the Cross that has brought us this realization and inclusion in His plan.  We are not only a…

“In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind (John 1:4 NIV).”

In a time when death seems to populate the media and we are bereft in our attempt to explain its preemptive suffering the good news that Jesus is ‘The Life’ is the message we need to bring to a distraught world.  It is also the message we need to reaffirm in our own consciousness.  The recent tragedy in Norway, the passing of an evangelical titan, John Stott, the dying friends and relatives amongst…

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen (2Peter 3:18 NIV).”

Now we want to look at knowledge and how to grow in the knowledge “of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 

Knowledge in our secular evaluation is the accumulation of ideas, concepts, facts and the contextual structure that categorizes them into an orderly system.  It is simply the mental accumulation of experience.  But there…

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen (2Peter 3:18 NIV).”

We have been looking at glory as the final cover, the tent in which our eternity is lived.  In the meantime Peter calls us to grow in grace and grow in knowledge.  The aim here is to see Jesus as the object of glory.  It seems we can give God glory.  To grow in grace and knowledge of Him is to give Him glory. 

First, to grow…

“We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and only Son…(Jn.1:14).”  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you…

We have talked about the 4^th Tent being the glory of God (Rev.7:14).”  And rightly so, it is the final tent, shelter, cover, for eternity.  Now when I say eternity I do not mean an endless succession of days, months, years and millennia.  When we come into the full presence of God there is no time because God is timeless.  We will simply be with Him in the fullness He intended for us, each of us.  Heb.13 gives us the same picture when referring to Jesus.  It says He is the same…

While we have identified three tents, those that the Lord created for this world, there is another one, a fourth one, mentioned in Revelation.  It is for the believers who have come into the Kingdom.  They “…are in front of the throne of God. They serve him day and night in his temple. The One who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them (Rev.7:15 NIV).”  Note the progression from the last three segments.  We go from the individual in a human body, to the gathered group of believers…