A couple of years ago, we were having an ant problem in the house where I rent my apartment. While the exterminator walked around, spraying here & there, we engaged in casual conversation. I’d met him before, but we had never gotten involved in conversation. This time, as we chatted, the topic of God came up. Turns out he is very much a believer, and as we spoke, he told me that if he had to sum up this world system in one word, it would be ‘deception’.
Obviously, I didn’t disagree. But I realize now, a year or two down the road, how oh-so-very-right he was!
ΑΩ
Paul tells us that ‘we look…at the things which are not seen’ rather than the temporal, while we live on this earth. (2 Corinthians 4:18)
But do we?
I write these next thoughts not to point fingers, not to fault-find but rather to shed some light on our paths. And I’m writing from personal experience – in fact, recent personal experience – so it’s a case of taking the log out of my own eye…
ΑΩ
I always thought that it was rather tricky to not be paying so much attention to temporal things, temporal reality. After all, we are living in an earthly world system! And the needs of the flesh, just to survive, (not to mention our wants!) require so much of our time & energy. Our focus. Although every one of us who comes to Christ has to work out their own salvation, with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), find their own method of juggling the visible and the invisible so that the visible doesn’t choke out true Life…how successful are most of us? I would guess that for many, it’s a hit-and-miss, up and down situation.
I also think that it may be a matter of God’s timing in each individual’s life. As I look back on where I’ve been & who I was, I can see how obtuse I’d been, when at that time I thought I was just the opposite! God loved me just as much then as He does now, but I myself wish I had seen more light!
God knows what each of us needs to go through before we are ready to really believe those words of His that may not not seem so easily apprehended. Unfortunately for us, that usually requires some pain. I wish this wasn’t the case, but even the Son learned obedience through suffering. To be willing to walk on water, maybe the ground on which you have been so firmly, so comfortably standing needs to start shifting & crumbling under you…
Grasping spiritual realities – even just wanting to grasp them – may be the result of most everything else in our lives not quite working out as we had wanted. I’ve found that so many once-desired goals or situations eventually become prisons. What at first presented as a ‘freedom’ or promises of safety & happiness change over time. We are caught in routines that constrict & restrict, and maybe we’d like to get out of them!
The promises of this world deceive.
ΑΩ
My own situations in life are not the conventional ones. I think I may be a part of that group who die, not having received the promises. Or at least something similar to that…so perhaps where I’m coming from may not resonate with many of you. But if it does, my aim is to encourage, not discourage. Getting to the place where the unseen things of God become more intriguing, desirable in a way they never before had been, is a good place to be.
ΑΩ
“…Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous: nevertheless afterwards it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” (Hebrews 12:11)
The Kingdom of God, the Republic of America & You 