When You Are Out and About

[HKHaugan]

“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 it all?  Each day we wake up is a day that is founded in the spiritual dimension that will demand a spiritual base to react to each moment in terms not of what we see but of what we can’t see. 

 

We can’t see the spiritual dimension because sin makes us blind to it.  It was Adam and Eve’s disobedience that caused the blindness. That disobedience was a spiritual explosion that ‘cataracted’ the eyes of our heart into darkness (which is why Paul prays that the ‘eyes of our heart’ may be enlightened…Eph.1:18).  It is a spiritual blindness; a blindness that hides the motivating factors in our unseen being in an unseen atmosphere populated by unseen beings. 

 

The reality of motivation is the part of the spiritual reality in each of us.  Motivation is what sparks behavior.  Motivation is also that part of us hiddenly vulnerable to temptation. You can’t look out from behind your eyes and not discern the awful disruption in human motivations.  Ego, vanity, self-centeredness, fear and pride which are vented in greed, conflict, manipulation, gossip, terror, murder, lust, hate, anger, rage and war.  Sin, the enemy’s deceiving implant, is the blinding force within.  Its goal is death in every area of our being.  Its methodology is to obsess us with the promise of self-fulfillment through self-indulgent intellect, emotional satisfaction and acquiring material symbols of fake success.  For every external temptation there is an evil spirit to encourage its gratification. 

 

On the other hand, even before we knew God, we possessed an inherent urge, a motivation, to find a sense of balanced rightness, who we are, why we are here and our ultimate function.  The image of God in us searches for our Creator.  This is His shape left within us waiting for its fulfillment (Yet He has not left Himself without testimony. Acts 14:17). The fact that we seek, knock and ask is evidence of His testimony left within us.  We search for love, kindness, compassion, sympathy, unity, joy, peace, faith, goodness and self-control to offset the darkness.  Somehow we know within they bring stability.

 

Human beings are caught in a no-man’s land between these two obviously contrary spiritual realities of good and evil.  There has to be light at the end of the tunnel.  It is not until there is a someone who can make sense out of it all, explain the truth about it, differentiate good from evil, then traverse it and show a way through the minefield, that we have any hope of making it through even a single day. There is that Someone right at the point of our seeking.  He knows where the mines are, each of them in each life in every age. 

 

Paul tells us in Eph.6:12 that we are in a spiritual battle, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”  If we look at these words carefully we will find they carry the same connotation as Jesus’ clear declaration in Mt.16:17 when Peter recognizes Him as the Christ, the Son of God.  Peter was given that insight, a spiritual insight from God.  It didn’t come from man’s intuition or knowledge. It was a spiritually given recognition.  It was from the heavenly realms, the unseen dimension.  He recognized, then realized, that Jesus was the Someone to show the way through the invisible.

 

There are three things we need to be aware of in this dimension.  First, this is where the devil and his forces wage war against God and us.  Second, and most importantly this is where, through the Cross, Jesus won the victory and supremacy over the devil and his forces. Third, this is where at Pentecost, Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to be our guide.  Jesus is the ‘Someone’ from the spiritual dimension who brings us the truth about the unseen dimension, the way to traverse it and the life that overcomes the darkness in it.  “That life was the light of men (Jn.1:4).”  He gives us the Holy Spirit to bring all of Himself within us.

 

What we want to do is to identify how to operate in the spiritual dimension.  It is accessible and demands a passport much like the one you carry when you travel overseas.  The passport has your name, picture and number.  The spiritual passport we carry is our relationship with Jesus as Savior and Lord.  We are born spiritually by the Holy Spirit when we receive Him.  We are born into His Body, His family.  In Jesus we become strangers and aliens to the world (1Peter 2:11) of sin, evil and the devil’s schemes.  Jesus replaces the devil’s influence.  Jesus is the heart of the relationship that carries us through the spiritual dimension. 

 

Our identity in Christ is who we are, disciples, learners and sharers, disciples who serve Him, learners who grow in Him and sharers who offer Him to others.    We are given spiritual gifts that shape our spiritual personality and service in the spiritual dimension.  The gifts function through the Holy Spirit who distributes them as we need them to grow, witness and minister as believers.  We rely on Scripture as the location device to spot our position in the spiritual dimension.  “We live by faith not by sight (2Cor.5:7).”

 

So everyday while you are out and about be conscious of the spiritual reality you are.  Again, and I repeat this even to the point of being annoyingly repetitive, ---we are not human beings having a spiritual experience.  We are spiritual beings having a human experience.