(Jesus said) "If you don't believe Me when I tell you about earthly things, how can you possibly believe Me if I tell you about heavenly things?" ...."God's words are always calling us out of our boxes and deeper, higher, and further into His Kingdom. And only those who are willing to be stretched can hear them." Chris Tiegreen
In the Old Testament, one of the writers spoke of "the land of far distances." He was speaking in spiritual terms, and he meant that God always has more for us, that He is always seeking to have us live, reaching forward. Reaching into a new place in Him, a deeper knowledge of Him. Not to, in Star Trek jargon, "go where no man's gone before," but certainly to a spiritual place that we've never gone before. We're to live spiritually stretching, reaching for that place in Him that cannot be had from the position of our comfort zone, or, from the box in which placed Him, and ourselves as well.
The above Scripture takes place in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus the Pharisee. Jesus had just told him that he needed to be spiritually "born again." Nicodemus asked how such a thing could be? How could a man re-enter his mother's womb and be born anew? He missed what Jesus' much deeper meaning was. That's when Jesus asked that if Nicodemus couldn't understand basic truth like this, how could he ever understand the much deeper things of God that He desired him to know? He asks the same of us.
Jesus often told His disciples, and all who listened to Him that He had "much more to tell them than this," but that He couldn't because they were not able to hear or understand what He wished for them to know. In a sense, the disciples had placed Jesus in a "box." They were limiting their knowledge of Him by defining Him according to their own understanding. They were comfortable with that. Jesus wasn't. He never will be......Where are we doing the same?
We in the church have been notorious for such for centuries now. We've set up parameters, invisible though they may be, where we have defined how He will speak, work, and act. I can't number the times I've heard fellow believers say, "I don't think God would do that." We don't, because we wouldn't do that. Everything comes from our perspective. He wishes it to all be from His. Our perspective will always shut us off from His. Our perspective keeps us from stretching forward, seeking to lay hold of new spiritual territory. Into ever deeper revelations of who He is. Our perspective is so earthbound that we can't understand the things of His heavenly Kingdom. As a friend puts it, we speak earthly language but He longs for us to know the language of the Kingdom of heaven, and I am not speaking of the spiritual gift of tongues. I mean the language of the Kingdom. The language that reveals more and more the mysteries of the Kingdom. They are only mysteries because we've not discovered their meaning yet. He means that we do. To do so, we must come out of our boxes, run the risk of reaching into the unknown, though it's only unknown to us, not to Him.
Jesus told the disciples that they didn't understand much of what He was saying now, but one day they would. With the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, they came out of the "boxes" they'd been in, and began their never ending journey into the deep things of God. It continues for them now in eternity. So will it for we who are His now, but may we not remain in our boxes until then. Let's live reaching forward, stretching with all of might to have all of Him that He gives. Can there be any other way of life for the believer?
Blessings,
Pastor O
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