The Box

 Your eyes will see the king in all his splendor, and you will see a land that stretches into the distance.  Isaiah 33:17...."God's words are always calling us out of our boxes and deeper and further into His heart and Kingdom. Only those who are willing to be stretched can hear them." Chris Tiegreen

My father was fond of saying of someone that, "they can't see past the end of their nose."  I don't know. Maybe he was talking about me? :-) In truth, he could have been talking of most of us, at least as concerns the things of the Spirit and the Kingdom.

Tiegreen speaks of the "boxes" that we tend to live in and confine God to. We're not able to imagine or think that a life outside of them is really possible. We see all that is within the box, but little or nothing of what lies beyond. And what we are seeing is viewed from the perspective of the five senses. The Father wants to take us beyond that. Far beyond that. He wants to take us to the "land of far distances." He wants us to see things, experience things with an eternal perspective always in mind. To see beyond our present circumstances and the confines of the here and now. He wants us to see past the ends of our spiritual noses. There's a condition though. We have to be willing to be stretched, and there can be pain in the stretching. Our comfort zone will be violated. So will our sense of being in control. But what we "see" in that distant land will be worth it all.

The land that He seeks to bring us into is the land that is His heart and His life. In Him are infinite depths. We will never exhaust the riches found in Him, and He is eager that we should never cease to explore and have those depths as our own.He is our inheritance in Christ, and He desires that our inheritance be in full, but it never will be to those who live in their boxes. Will it be, has it been for you and me?

The Father is constantly seeking to give us glimpses of all that He has for us. We won't fully see it all until we enter fully into eternity, but we can begin to see and have them right now through our faith and relationship with Christ. He calls us ever onward, ever upward, and ever deeper into Himself. We're not to "make camp" anywhere along the way. We keep pressing on. And in the going, we'll be stretched. Stretched beyond what we thought were the limits of our faith. Stretched beyond where we thought we could ever go in His Kingdom. And no matter where the last stretching has taken us, He has another one just ahead. And we press on.

Are you living for the land of far distances, or for a life in a box? Why would you choose to live in a box?

Blessings,
Pastor O