God's World

Coming back to the present for just a bit. I had to get this down because it just keeps nagging me and I mean that in an exceptionally good way. I awoke this morning about 4:30 a.m. and knew there just was no more sleep in me. I came into the library and began reading the Bible from The Message. I read the book of Ruth and then read the introduction to 1 Samuel. I love Eugene Peterson's introductions to the books in the Bible. I get so much insight from them. Well, in his introduction to 1 Samuel it really spoke to me, because it was just where my thoughts and heart were last night, again. I think God is speaking to me and trying really hard to get my attention on this matter. It just keeps recurring at different times and in different situations.

Here are the statements Peterson makes that really spoke to my mind and my heart:

• We don't have to fit into prefabricated moral or mental or religious boxes before we are admitted into the company of God--we are taken seriously just as we are and given a place in his story, for it is, after all, his story.
• None of us is the leading character in the story of life.
• The biblical way is not so much to present a moral code and tell us "Live up to this...Think like this and you will live well."
• The biblical way is to tell a story and invite us, "Live into this. This is what it looks like to be human...This is what is involved in entering and maturing as human beings."
• We do violence to the biblical revelation when we use it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives.
• That results in a kind of "boutique spirituality"--God as decoration, God as enhancement.
• ...we are not being led to see God in our stories, but to see our stories in God's.
• God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.

This is where my thoughts were last night while at church. Also, where my mind has been repeatedly over the past months and couple of years. My thoughts have been much more abstract and unformed, but nonetheless there. Kyle makes me think in my mind and heart. He grabs my attention and the Holy Spirit speaks. What do I do with it, then? That is my choice.

The question keeps coming back to me, "Why would I do all the things God asks or commands me to do? It can't be just to do the right thing, although that is good in a smaller context. But ultimately, it is really larger than that. God's world, spirit, is where the truth is. Even saying that limits it. In God's world there is no truth. By saying truth it lays out that there must be false. And that is not in God's world. We only have to set this truth/false concept up and do this in our world (human).

God wants me to live in that world, his world. Transcend human, so to speak, and live there, spirit. That's what Jesus did. Humanness was an encumbrance and a limitation. It was and is a prevention or deterrent to truly living in God's world. But nonetheless a world in which God wants me to live. All the revelation, stories and instruction in the Bible are to get me there.

This realization is the 'transforming' that Paul talks about. It's not just changing our lives so we can live better in this world. In fact we are told the opposite. The more we transform our lives into God's spirit world, the harder it will be on us in this world. But, the more peaceful and settled we will be in our heart, because our hearts will be less at war with God and the spirit.

The transforming of our lives is transcending us out of the human world and more into God's spirit world where he wants me to be. That transformation is the key to unlocking the doors and allowing us in, incrementally, little by little, to God's world, the true world and the eternal world. This is where we are headed ultimately, because of Jesus' work on the cross, his resurrection and our acceptance of it. But God doesn't want to wait for that. He wants us to transformationally move more to his world in our living each day until our bodies die or Jesus comes again.

Oh my, how that gives meaning to our lives as we live on this earth, encumbered and limited by humanness. Romans 12:1-2 is the complete explanation of this. Two short verses that explain completely what God is all about, once we accept Jesus' work for us. This is huge for me. I mean huge. It is the answer for all time about God's relationship to those who accept his Son's work on this earth for us. The only answer.

I must, repeat must, look at God in this way. My perspective must be that of Christ: eternal, spiritual, his world looking into ours, not ours looking into God's. That will dramatically change my life.