Monday, January 5, 2015

Traveling In Time And Space

In a way knowing the finished work makes us time travelers. Strangers trapped in time and space with knowledge of the far future and the distant past. Grace is the attitude we adopt when we see things from eternal perspective.

If we walk only by what we see or by how we feel, we will never understand life. Life is given by God and it is a puzzle that is missing pieces if it experienced by the senses alone.

"Let them alone; they are blind guides. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit." - Matthew 15:14 ESV

Someone must see beyond the situation. A grace person is visionary. They look for something that only God sees and receiving something from God that only God gives.

"But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved - and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," - Ephesians 2:4-6 ESV

"For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" - Romans 8:29-31 ESV

Jesus, Eternal God, was born as a baby and had to learn who He was. We are born again and have to learn who we are. Just as it is heresy to say Jesus was not human in every way it is error to say believers are somehow more but a spiritual sense that was dead is made alive when we first believed. Our spirit responds when we hear grace and our spirit prompted by the Holy Spirit sees with eyes of grace in situations that add an element that the five senses could never pick up.

"Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power." - Colossians 2:8-10 NKJV

"The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 'For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." - 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 ESV

We all know people who are very good at puzzles. They can do a lot with the pieces they have to survive and come to complicated conclusions. By predicting human nature they can forecast outcomes with degrees of accuracy. But faithless forecasting is spiritually blind and provides blind leadership.

Grace is the missing puzzle piece. It is what makes sense of human history. It is what makes sense of our personal life.

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." - John 1:14 ESV

"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a NKJV

How can love be this way? It can be this way because it understands beyond the five senses. It originates outside of time and space but is manifested in the moment.

"so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us," - Ephesians 3:17-20 ESV

The cross was a defining event in history. It changed the potential course of every human life. The broad road leads to destruction but this road paved by the cross is narrow but it leads to eternal life. If we know Jesus it is because we took the road less traveled and have an awareness of that alternate road.

Today is another day to walk as called out ones thinking and dealing with people and issues as if we have read the last page of the book. Our senses can rule us but if we are stirred up in the truth we can also live another way and function in the grace and mercy that will outshine time.

--

No comments:

Post a Comment