Back to Being a First Responder

[HKHaugan]

If ever we need direction for the mind, the heart and the spirit it is now.  As the culture changes more radically in its shape it is outpacing the ability of the individual to adjust.  The human mind is not as flexible, the human heart is not as elastic and the human spirit is not as absorbent as the demands our chameleon culture places upon them.  The culture is like a merry-go-round spinning out of control.  For those of us who are believers the frustrating sights around us, the social currents flowing by us and the surging waters of options rising about us are jamming the radar of our mental capacities.   Our hearts feel the weight and pressure of a massive technological hurricane that overloads our spirit and there are no control buttons we can push to shut the gates against the incoming tide.  The institutions in which we have placed our security are led by confused and compromised leaders whose minds, hearts and spirits have been exposed and we find to our disillusionment they are no different than the rest of us.  The future is uncertain; the angst of the present dominates our future.   So to whom do we turn?  How do we find our way out of this new invisible abyss? 

 

Now more than ever we need to assess God’s question to Adam, “Where are you?”  That is a three-dimensional question, a mind, heart and spirit question.  In ages past we started to answer with the mind hoping that the heart and the spirit might have the time to adjust.  In our time technology does not allow us that pleasure.  Analysis, pondering and consequent action in that order no longer work.  We are in an age when we reverse the procedure.  We must start with the spirit; our spirit and the Spirit of God.  If anything we are moving into a period of human experience where being spiritually oriented is the only way we can begin to secure the moment.  The “where-are-you” question starts with our spirit.  Isn’t it interesting that when God asks the question Adam could be seen as responding out of his spirit, the spirit of fear.  He proceeded to try and control his fear that had overcome his heart.  There is where he felt he was alone, isolated from God with a need to cover himself.  In that moment of aloneness he chose to hide and justify himself in his mind and blame God and Eve for his problem.

 

If it is necessary to identify where we are and need to be in this cultural cataclysm we must face the fact that everything we have said to this point concerns the invisible dimension in which all of us live.  Just the ideas of being a person, living among persons in a huge society and world, are all invisible and everything invisible immediately carries us into the realm of the spirit.  All of this is subject to spiritual evaluation not down the line but right at the moment we face any related issue.  For instance because of our supercharged and divided environment where nerves are on edge all the time, our sensitivities heightened by fear, we may find ourselves having to deal with more anxiety in our hearts as well as the hearts of others.  If our spirits are secure we will approach everything more from a sense of calm and peace.  So we need the Holy Spirit to activate our spirit to respond to the moment of need whether it be an emotional, spiritual or mental response.  

 

So we ask how?  How do we reverse our conditioned reactions in this age?  We have to choose the kind of training that emphasizes our spiritual foundation.  We start with Jesus all of whose responses were immediately spiritual.  How was He able to do that?  Well, you say, He was God so He just did it.  Ah, but we forget even though He was conceived by the Holy Spirit Jesus limited Himself to a limited human body with a limited human mind and heart.  Remember how the Scripture described Him at twelve years old in the Temple talking to the elders?  What confounded them was that He was asking and discussing spiritual matters but then it was necessary to be obedient to his parents and that He grow “in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men (Luke 2:52).”  The fact He had to grow, that He had to develop His spiritual responsiveness, means that we have to do the same.  And note this; it was not until he was about 30 years old that He started His mission and ministry.

 

But having to follow Jesus because that is the way He grew means something quite different for us.  We are born sinners whose first spiritual thoughts are for ourselves, not God or others.  We need help, recovery and reorientation.  We have to be spiritualized by the Holy Spirit, that is be reborn spiritually into Jesus and then grow spiritually toward God and one another.

 

Jesus is the reason we look first to Scripture to fill our minds with its principles.  Then in the company of other Scripture searchers we practice growing spiritually through worship, prayer, sharing then risking what we learn in the everyday world.  This is how we learn to respond spiritually before we respond any other way.  What we look forward to is the opportunity to try out our growing spirituality until it becomes our automatic response, our first response.  This is what it means to be a first responder as we have mentioned before.  Discipleship is learning to be a disciple, a spiritual first responder in every next moment.

 

The need in our age is to see everything as a spiritual event in which a spiritual response is necessary.  We have to think of ourselves first as spiritual discerners rather than having the right way to think or worry about the right way to react.  We have to see each next moment first as a spiritual moment demanding a spiritual response that is according to the Word.  We have to see people first as images of God not personalities or physical beings.  We have to see every interaction first as spiritual and not psychological.  We have to see everyone’s reaction first spiritually.  This is all about being faithful, reacting faithfully like Jesus, simply being faithful like Him and moving every day in faith.  Real life is not about being right (Jesus took care of that on the Cross.  We are right in His eyes.), but about being faithful, especially in our age.