Seeing the Unseen and Letting Others See What You See

[HKHaugan]

Habakkuk 2:2
”Then the LORD replied: “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.”

When I was in college I went out for track. It was something I felt I needed to do to be part of the college community and to further my own goals for acceptance and accomplishment. I really always liked the sport and believed I could do fairly well at it. Talking to the coach and accepting his conditioning program for me, I started running the miles necessary to build stamina and endurance. It soon became apparent I would never be a champion or even a good distance runner. I did place in a few cross country and distance races and got my cherished letter sweater but knew that would be it. What I did discover later on in life was that running would turn into jogging and jogging would have a significant effect on lengthening my life and further realizing that winning was not really the benefit. It was the process that had something else to which it pointed. There was an horizon, a personal horizon the Lord had set for me. He was the horizon, the goal and the benefit.

After asking Him to be the center of my life I began to see spiritual parallels in life experiences. He was getting me to think spiritually. Putting together a spiritual parallel to my track experience the Lord taught me something about belief, trust, faith, context and conditioning that would carry me on when I became a disciple of Jesus. What I did in track, ---belief in the sport, trust in the coach and his conditioning program and faith to do the workouts---, helped set the stage for getting my education, being ordained and living out life as a clergyman. It was a long process of setting goals that helped to fulfill ultimate goals that are still continuing right along everyday in my retirement years. I believe in Jesus, I trust His conditioning program and I have faith to act it out because this life is a preparation for eternal life with God.

How does all this relate to sharing our faith in the secular world? Human beings have all the ingredients necessary to become disciples of Jesus who run ‘a race’ as preparation for eternity. Everything they are already doing can serve as contact points for us to share our faith so they can get back ‘on track’ to gain what they were created for---a relationship with God, a fulfilled life here and helping others to find their true path. Let’s look at the basic points of contact we have with all people. We’ll start with faith.

The premise of faith is its reality. No one can deny its centrality. We already know that it is a built in capacity from birth. We know that everyone everywhere uses this capacity. Everyone believes, trusts and has faith in something. This is how we live every day. The questions are these: “What is our faith centered in? What motivates us to do what we do? What drives us?”

The average person usually identifies an object of desire and goes after it. It can be a long or short-term goal. A job, an education, a vacation, a friendship, a wife of husband, or just something as simple as dinner out is chosen based on the belief in what will be experienced, trusting the best way to obtain it and the faith to go after it. For some it is a day-to-day survival like the homeless have. For others that are career driven it is a lifetime context. This takes us back to our questions, which are now begging for a context, a context that satisfies and finds long-term satisfaction.

Each and every day is an exercise in faith. How do we start a day? First, we wake up, face the day ahead, engage our mind and survey what we believe has to be done. Second, we trust we have a productive process that enables us to get it done. Third, we get up and move step by step in faith through every next moment to accomplish what we believe and trust. Life is a process we have been given that involves making choices and decisions using our capacities of belief, trust and faith.

Note this. The entire process is lived in a context we choose to be the center of our life. It really is all about the context, the invisible context, the mental, personal, emotional and spiritual context.

If we recognize the context we have chosen it is important to understand the needs that we believe are being satisfied within it. This is why we have, in recent blogs, dealt with the difference between perceived or felt needs and real needs. Once we ask the question about their difference is when we begin to understand how to prioritize our choices and decisions.

Again, perceived or felt needs are usually temporary and satisfy a very limited time period. They tend to take over and distract us from facing the negative self-destructive consequences they can incur. They also exploit our weaknesses and fears keeping us trapped in their web.

Real needs, on the other hand, open us to the satisfaction of who we really are as persons. They get us in touch with our hearts because they demand extended thought, emotional investment and spiritual balance. Their satisfaction builds endurance, stability, confidence and personal character. Having a relationship with God, growing in faith, building sound relationships, what it means to love others, experiencing how to be right without having to win, being patient, the willingness to see the bigger picture, letting others have their say and seeing the wisdom found in Scripture.

Reality is this: just like in track, conditioning is the key. It is the conditioning we choose to develop as persons that handles the issue of real needs versus felt needs. The goals that we choose to shape us take us to conditioning ourselves to meet them. This is precisely why whom we look to and what we choose to condition our basic response to every next moment is vital. The key to life is the conditioning of our invisible nature because 100% of our life is driven by what we can’t see.

Jesus is the only one who has traversed the vast invisible dimension of good and evil through His death on the Cross and His Resurrection to give us the truth about what we can’t see, the way to live it out in this world and the life that leads us into His eternity. That’s why we take His leadership seriously when it comes to life in this world. He exposes the problems and offers Himself as the solution. It’s a moment-by-moment process that sharpens our awareness enabling us to navigate the unseen.

For us who have placed the entire process in the hands of the Lord Jesus, each day is viewed in His context, the way His mind taught, His heart reached out and the faith He took to the Cross. It is the context of His mind, heart and Spirit that motivates who and what we are. Most of what we do is based on conditioning our responses to react because life moves so fast we can’t sit and ponder our response to every next moment. This is precisely why what we center the process in is vital to our living experience. We have the Spirit of Jesus as our prompter, a counselor who nudges us at the moment of our choices. Conditioned in Scripture we slowly begin to turn from self to letting the Spirit lead the way.

It is the conditioning through Scripture that reorients the mind from self to God, from impetuous choices to Spirit discipline and from recognizing the self-centering sin that distracts us to the Holy Spirit who guides us. When you really get into the process, all of it depends on reacting to the moment trusting the Lord as the truth to believe, the way to live and the faith to act.

Part of the process for us is sharing our own spiritual travels with others who don’t know about Jesus or the process He offers. What we will find is that all our earthly experiences have spiritual parallels. This is our witness, bringing forth spiritual reality in the midst of the dark confusion in those who don’t know Him.

24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. 25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. 26 Therefore I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. 27 No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1Cor.9)