It's Time to Get Real 7

[HKHaugan]

In “It’s Time to Get Real 6” there was a general idea presented. That is, letting Scripture open the door to ultimate reality, spiritual reality, which then in turn reorders how we appraise who we are, why we are here and where we are headed. What we are presented with there is choice, choice to either live by what works forever or by whatever gets us through the next moment. When you boil it down, when you get to Scripture’s bottom line, reality is God or self. Obviously one is forever and the other is temporary. Scripture is about both with the one solving the other, God’s forever-ness overcoming man’s temporariness. It’s permanent living security as opposed to fear-driven survival in the temporary. It’s a personal relationship with God through Jesus as opposed to an obstinate denial of God that always winds up attempting to blur His reality through invented philosophies and complicated theories. It’s being right guided by the mind of God revealed in Scripture as opposed to living by any standard I choose which is really slavery to self and to those in the army of denial I get to agree with me. It’s trying to be like God without God (Gen.3).

So ‘getting real’ is defined by what is spiritual and its has two contexts, temporary and eternal. You can choose to get real in the temporary or you can choose to get real in the permanent. Let’s look at the choice. Death, evil, sin and the devil are the context of the temporary and its spirit is fear. Life in a never-changing God is the context of eternity and its spirit is God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of grace, His acceptance, love and a sound mind. The first finds our end in eternal lonely despair and the second being one with a loving God and a growing spiritual family. The choice is obvious but sin’s power is found in its ability to distract us through momentary problems, weaknesses and needs. It majors in exploiting our perceived needs to be seen as our real needs and getting us to look at present physical and emotional survival as the only reality. Further, sin is deceptively active in separating us from dealing with our eternal needs. It is especially effective in manipulating our obstinate stubbornness, which is buffered by fear and pride to empower its denial.

The choice is ours. We can either live by faith or by fear. For those who don’t choose God, it’s all about ‘me’ and lonely survival for the moment. Here the spirit of fear dominates thinking. When we understand the context we can see the process necessary to move in it. Unseen spiritual reality is permanent. It is here that Scripture takes the high ground informing us of both sides of spiritual reality, its light in Jesus and its darkness in the devil. The low ground is the devil declaring that whatever we think apart from God’s Word is right. That’s where he exercises his temptations for our mind and heart. Scripture to him is whatever we declare to be right. His method is to encourage self-justification and rationalization as the proper techniques to concentrate on and secure ourselves in every present moment.

Our taking Scripture seriously is a spiritual process of moving in the permanent. It involves letting the Holy Spirit show us the path. That path is simple. It is Jesus, His view of Scripture and His words (John 14:26). The Holy Spirit’s task is to elevate Jesus in our mind, remind us of what He said and then to encourage us to act on the insight He has given us. He does that by our reading Scripture. He starts by lifting a thought consistent with Jesus for our mind to consider, moves us to trust it in our heart and encourages us to act on it in faith in our spirit. That consistent kind of thinking is how Scripture works in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. While all of this is still presented in a general sense, how this works specifically, we’ll get into next time.