We Have a Situation Here

[HKHaugan]

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 a ‘situation’ I don’t mean a crisis.  I just mean whatever happens when we arrive wherever we’re going.  It could be something as simple as going to the store.  You are motivated for some reason to go, find the unexpected when you get there and respond to whatever occurs.  It could be a chance meeting, or not finding what you need or running into a person who has a problem or how you act at the checkout line when you are in a hurry.  The dynamics of motivation and response go into motion based on how you have been conditioned to respond.    

 

What I have just described all happens in the invisible dimension making it all spiritual.  The reason, the motivation, the button pushing us into action is all unseen and thus vulnerable to the forces in that dimension.  Recently we were at an outdoor concert in the mountains.  At intermission time one of the sponsors was asked to come to the mike and describe her business.  As she stood at the edge of the stage you could tell she was nervous and really didn’t want to talk to the crowd.  She came forward and read softly from her notes.  No one could hear her.  Someone shouted ‘louder’ and that froze her completely.  The local MC had to come to the rescue and read the statement she had prepared.  She went back to the edge of the stage head down smiling sheepishly. 

 

It also reminds me of that movie “The King’s Speech.’  Some of the same dynamics were at work.  But there we had some insight into the king’s reluctance part of which was his stuttering problem and its early causes.  In both cases there are unseen factors that cause the hesitation and the responses.  Now multiply those by 7.5 billion people each wrestling in their unique quandary and we are all actually living in an invisible sea of arrested spiritual conditioning.  It is into this milieu Jesus came to right the buffeted ship of humanity writhing in the spiritual storms raging in the unseen spiritual ocean around us. 

 

Jesus narrowed the solution by becoming the living person of grace and truth we relate to in faith.  In Him is the definition of what it means to be motivated, to reason and to respond.  In Him God’s balance is the unified working of the perfect mind, the pure heart and the committed Spirit that give us the exact image of God.  It is He in whose image we are created.  It is in a personal relationship with Him that we are brought into stability in mind, heart and spirit.  That does not mean we are on our own struggling to follow an example.  He is right there in our hearts filling us and prompting us with His Holy Spirit.

 

Comparing our minds, hearts and spirits, with those of Jesus is a relational process with Him in which we are being recovered from former sinful responses and being led to be more like Him.  That ongoing process will open the door to spiritual reality in a way that, when we start delving into how to live in the atmosphere of the unseen, we have a perfect guide as we enter every next moment in the unseen dimension. 

 

Again, Jesus has given us the Holy Spirit, the One Spirit, to replace the inner and outer spiritual forces that war against us.   The Holy Spirit always get us back to Jesus in a way that solves the issues of the immediate moment.  It may take time to adjust to the prompting of the Spirit but He will move us in the right direction.

 

Before we get into the means of correcting where we are let’s look for a moment at what every human being faces.  Everything in the unseen is influenced by something either that leads us into Jesus’ light or the devil’s darkness.  It can come from within or without.  Let’s look at the ‘within’ and ‘without.’

 

One thing we know about what is within and that is sin.  Sin is subtle.  You really don’t know it’s a problem until we are made aware of it.  Sin is a spiritual influence that isolates us into a sense of aloneness, isolation and alienation.  Sin is the primary block that keeps us in fear, pride and aloneness when it comes to spirituality.  Sin is the spiritual reality that makes us vulnerable to the activity of evil spirits.  Thus the pilot fish of fear and pride ride along with the self-centered reactions that occur when we rationalize and justify what we think and how we behave without God in our lives or even if we are God believers and choose to make choices without Him. 

 

One thing we know about what is without is that there are unseen influences that lure us into rationalization and self-justification when we choose to think and act apart from God.  Sin is the magnet that draws them.  They are spirits that egg us on to behave in a particular way, that urge our motivation toward self-centered behavior.  Anytime we think apart from God there are hosts of spirits that attack us and goad us into thinking we are in control and ready to empower our sin to act apart from God.  We may not think our situation is spiritual at the moment but anytime we make a choice or decision a spirit or spirits will be knocking on the doors of our mind, heart and spirit to move us away from God’s Spirit.  This is what temptation is all about.  Temptation is always there to get us to think and act apart from God.  This is why motivation is the critical area in all of our activity.  Who motivates us will determine our spiritual condition and our resulting behavior.  We have a situation here and it spiritual.  Jesus has the answer to it.  Next we’ll look at the answer in more detail.