BP108
Designer Therapy for Life believes it is critical to know what drives us, what fills us, what gives us a reason to get up every day. This post will take a glance at the hungers and realities that build kingdoms in our souls and demand our attention . . .
I was at a sold-out Vikings playoff game and the crowd was roaring all around me. I stood up and clapped for the player who had just caught a piece of inflated cow skin. While the cheering continued and the guy behind me spilled his beer on my seat, my mind suddenly changed gears. I stopped clapping and slowly scanned the tens of thousands of people who were worshipping the man who ran over plastic grass (okay, polyethylene-blend fibers) and across a painted white line.
Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe they were not all worshipping the man running with the cow skin. However, I did wonder who in that huge crowd knew Jesus as their Savior and if they yelled and clapped for the God of the universe with the same passion they did for the guy wearing purple tights and horns on his helmet. Honestly, I did not judge any of the ‘idolaters’ (except maybe for the guy behind me, briefly) because, after all, I had chosen to be in this house of worship with everyone else and was also cheering and pumping my fist.
I’m not saying here that it is wrong to go to a professional sports game and get excited. Nope. What I am saying is that I wonder how many people get so sucked into the pleasures of this material world that they forget the eternal reality rumbling beneath everything. At that sobering moment in the Vikings game, I could not help but think of the words from 2 Corinthians 4.
So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal ~ vv. 16-18
Am I beginning to talk about shoulds here and acting like a heavenly policeman who wants to shame people for being bad? Not at all. I am pondering what makes believers in Christ different from the world of unbelievers and what helps them feel like Jesus is near to them and relevant to their daily lives.
Another way to approach the seen and the unseen is to ask, what is more real to us? Is it the man in tights or the Son of Man who was born into this world to save us? Is it the transient things or the eternal things?
Why do I so easily cheer for the man who he is running with the cow skin and so easily forget about Jesus who made me, saved me, and will glorify me one day? Does it come down to the fact that the seen things are so apparent while the unseen things are so invisible?
God’s word tells us that we are born into this world naturally distracted from (even opposed to) God. We are born fallen, in sin, and so we will naturally desire natural things in this world. Material things. Creatures instead of the Creator. Idols. Anything but God whose existence we naturally deny.
Everyone who does not know Jesus is in the natural state, separated from God. They walk by sight and not by faith. They cannot see the other world, the one that can only be seen when, like Saul on the road to Damascus, the scales are removed from our old, natural eyes and we can see spiritual realities for the first time.
The problem with coming into this world equipped with natural eyes, natural ears, a heart of stone, and only the fallen flesh in us—the old man and the old woman—is that we will only desire natural things. In fact, we are only capable of desiring natural things. The Bible calls these things the passions of the flesh. We do not naturally desire God or the things that are above (Colossians 3:1-4).
Without even trying, we are hungry for the things of earth: alcohol, food, a person we idealize and look to fill our deepest emptiness, a car, a dream house, the beauty of nature, a cabin on the lake, working out at the gym six days a week that gives us a lithe, muscular body, the job that defines our value, a six figure income, even the latest movie at the theater that leaves us teary or feeling adrenaline coursing through our body.
You name it–anything can feed our deep hunger. The problem is that none of these things fill us. Only something beyond this world can feed our deepest appetite and quench our fiercest thirst. Sorry, I mean only Someone.
What we see gets our attention. What our eyes follow is what we will love and what we will become. The natural person only has physical eyes that see the material world. She is literally blind to spiritual reality. The spiritual person (indwelt by the Holy Spirit) is capable of not only seeing the physical world but also seeing another world.
You have heard me mention it before, namely, that Christians are amphibians, creatures that live in two environments, the water and the land: this physical reality and the metaphysical as well. We are living in this current physical world, but our citizenship is in heaven. We are in the world but not of the world.
2 Corinthians 5:8 says, “Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” Earth is not our home. We are strangers and aliens passing through (but making the most of our time on this planet).
The person who knows Jesus personally would rather be with Jesus, at home with Him. Would the natural man or woman ever desire that? No. We know that Romans 8:7 tells us that the natural person, the person who is suppressing the truth about God and instead pursuing the creature, the idol—this person has his mind set on the flesh.
“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
So, the problem for every human is that we are born in the flesh and only have eyes and hunger for this world even though we were originally created to be walking with God in joyful fellowship.
Fortunately, the Father had an answer for our alienation from the love of heaven. He sent His only Son, Jesus, to reconcile us to Himself. When we believe in Jesus and come to love Him as the Satisfier of our deepest hunger, we our delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of the beloved Son. We are now friends of God, not foes.
But is that the end of the story? No, after being transferred into His kingdom family, we then must daily practice His presence. Why? Because we will love what we stare at, and we will stare at what we love. Like the Psalmist said, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” ~ Psalm 27:4.
Gazing on Jesus, walking with Him, being in His Presence—these become the growing desire of those who stare at Him. The more we look at Him with spiritual eyes, the more we want to gaze at Him. And as 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us, the more we look at Him, the more we are changed from one degree of glory to another. In other words, staring at Jesus grows us into the amazing spiritual beings we were created to be. So, fix your eyes on Him.
To have good psychological, spiritual, and relational health, we must walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). We need to walk through this world practicing our spiritual eyesight, i.e., looking at Jesus. Physical eyesight comes easy to us for it is the way of the natural world. We are born into this world with it.
Spiritual eyesight is available only to those who have experienced a second birth and have become a new creation. Even after it is acquired, spiritual eyesight must be practiced for it is not natural to this world. It goes against the grain of this fallen universe that is blind to spiritual realities.
Let’s close by looking at what God’s word (1 Corinthians 2:12ff) says about the natural person and the spiritual person.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 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 [see them with natural eyes] because they are spiritually discerned . . . “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we [those who have spiritual eyesight] have the mind of Christ.
So, Christian, just as you have received Christ Jesus as your Lord, so walk in Him (Colossians 2:6ff), namely, stare at Him.
Gaze at His beauty. Seek Him. Learn about His character. Weep with Him. Share your anger with Him. Cry out to Him when you are frightened or lonely.
Practice His Presence. Study Him. Internalize His peace-giving and joy-filling character. Set your minds on the things that are above.
Remember—it’s all about the relationship. Love. Presence. Being with.
So, watch the man in tights catching the cow skin. Just don’t worship him. Instead, practice praising the One and Only who says to you, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” ~ Jeremiah 29:13.