“We have a soul that can relate to God but our soul is wrapped in flesh and the flesh has cravings and often speaks so much clearer and louder than the truth.”
I love the way God speaks to us earthly creatures in scripture. Spiritual things are very hard for us to wrap our minds around because we are flesh and blood. We have a soul that can relate to God but our soul is wrapped in flesh and the flesh has cravings and often speaks so much clearer and louder than the truth.
I challenge you to start looking at scripture with eyes that see our God telling us deep spiritual truths through everyday life and what He has made in creation.
His parables involved weddings, feasts, losing a valuable coin, planting seeds, and many other every day events. God does this in scripture to speak our language and help us understand things we can’t see.
Ultimately, it’s one of the reasons He became a man. Let me give an example. A bird is in your house and you are trying to rescue it. You have wonderful intentions toward the bird, but there is absolutely no way to make that bird understand. Therefore it flies as far away from you as it can because you are terrifying. You are different than the bird, you are big, you are coming toward him and all he knows is you want to kill him, eat him, or whatever else a bird may think.
How could you help that bird to understand if you had no limits? What if, for a moment, you could become a bird and tell that bird exactly what you were doing and what your intentions were?
“Jesus became one of us so He could let us know how God actually felt about us and what His intentions were.”
In the same way, Jesus became one of us so He could let us know how God actually felt about us and what His intentions were.
Now we can look to the life of Jesus and know God. What a gift!
The way (path) of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn,
which shines ever brighter until the full light of day.
Proverbs 4:18
What a picture this proverb is. The way or path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn.
What is the first gleam of dawn like? I sit in a bedroom to meet with God each morning. A window is directly in front of me. When I first sit down, I can see nothing at all outside because it’s completely dark. As the sun starts to come up, I can see a little bit but it’s still not clear at all.
“We like to know everything that’s ahead of us. But God makes it very clear that the path of the righteous will not be very clear at the beginning.”
That’s how it is when we begin walking with God. The path of the righteous is the path that a believer is walking. A righteous person is a person who is living by faith and not sight. That scares us. We like to know everything that’s ahead of us. But God makes it very clear that the path of the righteous will not be very clear at the beginning. It will be barely visible. As we continue down the path, by faith, the light will get brighter and brighter until “the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades” (To quote a song from the 80’s).
The beginning of faith is hard and feels so wrong. We are used to living by our five senses. God has asked us to live by the true sixth sense… faith.
This sense has to be honed. When a person loses one of their senses, God created us in such a way that our other senses get heightened. If I were to lose my sight, my smell, touch, hearing and tasting would start to compensate for my survival.
In the same way, when God tells us to live by faith instead of sight, we have to hone that sense. How do we do this? How does what God says speak to us and affect us more than what we see? How do we believe what God says over what we see?
“When we let His Word be our guide and we start to plan our life around what He says, our spiritual eyes will start to see more and more plainly… by faith.”
We will do it very timidly at first. The path will be kind of dark and frightening. However, God is moved when we let what He says trump what we plainly see. When we let His Word be our guide and we start to plan our life around what He says, our spiritual eyes will start to see more and more plainly… by faith.
When we start down this narrow road, it’s very hard and feels wrong. However, as we press forward, our spiritual eyes start to adjust.
We have the ability to live like the heroes of the faith in scripture.
It is said of Moses:
“By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.
Hebrews 11:27
Paul said:
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
It is said of Abraham:
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Hebrews 11:10
There is no other way to please God than faith. Faith is simply believing what God says over everything we see.
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Hebrews 11:1
“When we start down the path of faith, we will see it’s what we were built for.”
God’s ways are opposite of ours and that will never change. However, we are made in the image of our invisible God. When we start down the path of faith, we will see it’s what we were built for. The only ones who won’t live this way are the ones who refuse to take that first scary step.
“After a while, what you see will be nothing in comparison to what He says!”
I dare you, step out. Dare to leave the wretched life of false security and launch out on what God says. After a while, what you see will be nothing in comparison to what He says!
