Heart Tracks - Rumored

     While walking through the local Christian bookstore the other day, I saw a prominent display with a number of books all telling of various writers encounters with the Father, Jesus, and heaven in near death or real death experiences.  Such books have been bestsellers in recent years and that's not a great surprise.  Most people love to read of such experiences and just what it was the people "saw" during them.  I don't have a problem with the books, and can even see real value in them, but I do have a question; what part of our fascination with these stories is due to our own lack of real experience of the glory of eternity, Christ the King, the Almighty Father, and the Holy Spirit in our day to day lives?  Have we seen so little real "evidence" of them in our own lives that we hungrily devour accounts of those who who have "seen" them?  Is the unseen God remaining mostly unseen to most of us?  Are the eyes of our spirit so dull that we have no real understanding of what it is to "fix our eyes upon Jesus?"

    In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul, writes to a church fellowship whose members apparently sought to follow a Christ they rarely if ever seemed to be able to see in their everyday lives.  Called to live lives led of and filled with His Holy Spirit, they instead lived according to the flesh, and remained enslaved to the things of the flesh.  Writing to them, Paul tells them of Moses and his dealings with the Israelites, how after his own encounters with God, he had to veil his face, because it was so filled with the glory of God, a glory that the people themselves were unable to behold.  A glory they feared and found painful.  He said that veil remained and covered the minds and hearts of the present day Jews whenever they heard the truth of Christ, yet failed to believe, receive, and live in that truth.  To the Corinthians he wrote, "But whenever anyone turns to the Lord then the veil is taken away.  Now the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, He gives freedom.  And all of us have had the veil removed so that we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord.  And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like Him, and reflect His glory even more."  We reflect His glory as we behold His glory....firsthand.  We're not dependent upon what someone else has seen, because we ourselves see.  What is unseen to the natural eye, becomes more and more seen, and clear to the those who see with spiritual eyes.  The invisible Christ become very visible to those that are His.  No, we don't yet see fully, or completely, but we do see, and see more fully as we grow in Him.  The veil has been removed.  The question for you and I is, has that veil really been removed, or are we depending upon our own "Moses" types to hear from them what He has said, and relate to us what they have seen?  Does the veil remain in great degree, still covering our hearts, minds, and eyes?
    Philip Yancey wrote a book entitled "Rumors Of Another World."  If we are living, basing our faith on mere rumors, depending upon what others have seen and heard of and from Him, life will be most unsatisfying.  We may believe the rumor, but what the rumor promises will never be our reality.  It was wonderful news when Mary related to the disciples that she'd just seen Jesus, but until they saw Him themselves, it remained a rumor.  They may have believed in Him, but when the saw Him, they believed Him.  He was their reality.  Is He ours today?  Has the veil really been removed?  Are we beholding His glory?  In the beholding, are we becoming.  Becoming more and more like He whom we behold?  Is He more rumor than reality?  Our lives will show the truth.

Blessings,
Pastor O