30. Completeness

‘Vision’ Meditations No.30: Completeness

1 Cor 15:24,25“the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

There is always a particular difficulty, I feel, when it comes to handling the Bible and seeking to understand what it is saying to us, and it is to take spiritual words and bring them in practical, ordinary, down-to-earth terms. It is very easy for us to sink into a spiritual mentality that is somehow ‘other-worldish’ and therefore divorced from what we know as the everyday reality of life.

Thus, we can look at the big-scheme-of-things picture (as we have been seeking to do in this particular series) but then close our Bible and retreat back into ‘the ordinary world’ where we go and have breakfast, perhaps go out to work, go shopping or whatever else our day’s agenda has on it, and forget that ‘other world’ stuff we had been meditating on in our ‘Quiet Time’. The worry is that in our mind we have two distinct and separate realities, neither really having any impact on the other.

The goal of every form of Bible Study, reflection or meditation must, therefore, surely be the bring the two realities together so we see how the ‘spiritual’ impacts, affects and changes the ‘material’ one. How will the truths I find in the Bible be translated into goals for my daily life?

Perhaps this is no more true than when we place before ourselves a major goal as we have had in this series of understanding how God’s initial thoughts (vision) from before the beginning of time, shape how I think about my life today. Has it been merely an academic study, or has it provided fuel to stoke the fire of my life, creating energy, direction and purpose behind all that is ‘me’ and who I am and how I live?

The conclusion (or near conclusion) of that vision we have been considering takes shape in our starter verse above. This is the peak, the climax, the pinnacle, the ultimate goal of the Godhead, that the end of the vision is guaranteed, that Jesus will destroy all evil opposition to the Godhead, as he reigns until he has “put all his enemies under his feet.” (1 Cor 15:24,25)

Never lose sight of this truth. This goal speaks of opportunity (possibilities of loved ones yet to be saved – 2 Pet 3:8,9), a daily task (to work with Christ as his co-workers – 2 Cor 6:1), and a hope of a glorious eternity with God (Rev 21:1-4). If the vision is hazy, ask the Lord to let you see it clearly that you may walk into it more boldly and with rejoicing.

Let’s state those three things again. First, there is opportunity which speaks of my possible input into this vision on a daily basis, i.e. what I may contribute to it. Second, there is the realization that I am not alone but as part of the body of Christ I am called to follow him and work in harmony with him, Then, third, there is the future, the time ahead of me, first here in the remaining years He will give me here on earth, and then on into an incredible eternity with Him. All of this is part of that vision on God’s heart, formulated from before time began, continued throughout time-space history and on into the wonder of eternity. That last aspect would be scary if it wasn’t for the truth that we have so much revealed of God’s love in His word, from this side of eternity, that we can be confident that in whatever realm we find ourselves, His love will still be there with us and for us. Hallelujah and Amen! 

29. Purpose!

‘Vision’ Meditations No.29: Purpose!

Rom 8:28 “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”

In the end yesterday we arrived at this verse and so as we near the end of this series I draw our attention to the last four words of what is for many a familiar verse – “according to his purpose”. This is what has been behind the whole thrust of this month – the vision or purpose of God from before the Creation of the world.

Because God SAW from ‘back then’ how it would all work out once He granted us free-will, He SAW that the only way to redeem sinful mankind would be by His Son dying to satisfy Justice on our behalf.

When we really think this through, as we have been trying to do in recent studies, we see that despite exercising their free will, mankind can be brought back into a more glorious position where, having fallen, it is possible for us to be redeemed and brought back into a position we could never have earned on our own.

How? By being redeemed by the very one we have rejected.

How? By being reconciled to Him.

How? By being made into the likeness of His Son, so that we join with him in the ongoing purpose of turning others to him to realise the love that was there from before the beginning of time and is still there for whoever will hear. 

THIS is what God is working at in every aspect of our lives, hence the phrase ‘in all things’. Whatever area of your life you look at, He says He is working there for YOUR good. Now I think if we are being honest, we have to say that for much of the time we are not aware of God actually moving in our lives. That does not mean He isn’t; it’s just that we are not aware of it. I have commented before on these pages that looking back on the major changes in my life, when they were occurring I wasn’t aware of God’s activity in them; it only became clear later on, looking back.

Thus it becomes a declaration of faith in response to His word that we have been studying, that we are able to declare these things, specifically in respect of our own lives,

• that He had this plan from before Creation,
• that vision (plan) saw me in my position in time-space history and saw that I would respond to the call to believe in and follow His Son,
• therefore everything that has taken place in my life in respect of God – being forgiven, cleansed, redeemed, justified, adopted and empowered – is part of that initial vision being worked out,
• and will continue to be worked out until God sees it has come to the ultimate conclusion that He saw from the beginning, would be the fitting end that only He knows.

The practical outworking of all this requires me to remind myself that my life is simply part of this master-vision that God saw was the only way history could be worked out given the fact of my free will. Within that reminder comes an additional reminder that I have not yet come to the end of my part yet and that there may yet still be life-changing and world-changing actions on my part (not yet perceived) before my final call to heaven. Any more? Yes, my part is to follow Jesus and respond to the prompting of his Spirit whenever I am aware of it. It is the invite to have a conscious part to play in this great drama and, perhaps, all along the way, to ask Him to open my eyes to see this vision being worked out and my part in it. Or as Paul put it, “that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people.” (Eph 1:18) Hallelujah!  

28. Your world-changing possibilities (2)

‘Vision’ Meditations No.28: Your world-changing possibilities (2)

Heb 13:14 “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”

Yesterday we glimpsed the potential of our small actions today on future history. We didn’t (sorry!) really pick up on yesterday’s starter verse that was really about how the world (and us) so often has the feeling that there is better yet to come. The writer to the Hebrews clearly felt this strongly as he wrote about such feelings (see Heb 11:10,16 and 13:14 above). So yesterday we pictured time-space history as a line observable from above (I think it was C.S.Lewis who used this idea) in order to see more clearly how time works linearly, one event following another. This is the concept of God’s vision that we have been following, and the possibilities of our small actions affecting things further along the line.

So the writer to the Hebrews is saying something similar to what Paul was saying that we’ve recently looked at – there is something better yet to come. Is this only after God creates the new heaven and new earth (Rev 21:1)? No, I think this is what we sometimes use as an ‘escape clause’ for not acting as the body of Christ, bringing in the kingdom here and now!

This brings us face to face with what the New Testament’s vision of the Church really is – the ongoing expression of Christ through his people while he continues to do what he did in one body two thousand years ago (Jn 14:12). Dare we face this vision challenge – we are called to be a supernatural people doing supernatural works as the vision of God is worked out in these days, as we work together as one body of many gifted parts.

Now Paul wrote, “It is plain to anyone with eyes to see that at the present time all created life groans in a sort of universal travail,” (Rom 8:22 JBP) but he also added, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed,” which implies one of two things. Either that history (the creation) will be satisfied when it sees us in heaven, fully redeemed, the perfect people we were designed to be, OR as every day goes by, we, “are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory,” (2 Cor 3:18) or as the Message version puts it, “our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him.”

This second possibility, I would suggest, is the more likely. (The first one can be a cop-out or escape-from-responsibility clause). Just think about it. When we first turned to Christ, our self-centred, godless lives that Paul describes in Eph 2:1-3, were verging on or were already a mess as we came to realize our need of a saviour and our lives needing to be utterly transformed. Now for some of us, that was many years ago. Can you be honest (without mock humility) about the changes that have taken place in you over those years? Supposing you turned to Christ thirty years ago, that means that for thirty years God has been working to change you – and ‘the creation’ will recognize that and eagerly watches to see the further changes taking place in you in the years yet to come.

Yesterday I suggested a very simple way you might bless someone else and the major impact that might have. Never minimize that possibility.  We often talk about our lives being ‘a work in progress’ and that is true, but don’t use that to demean what God can do through you. He sees the whole of the vision and knows what you can yet become, so don’t listen to the enemy who would whisper, “Who are you kidding!!! You’ve had so little impact so far in your life, it’s not likely you’re going to do any world changing things in the future!!”  Discourager, liar!

Well, first, as we said before, we won’t know the true effects of things we’ve said or done in the past, until God shows us once we get to heaven, and if the truth be told if God marked that timeline with red stars to indicate all the good you contributed to the lives of others, then I suggest it is probable that there would be hundreds or thousands of such stars attributed to you! And as for the future – it’s just possible the Godhead is eagerly watching that timeline being rolled out for they know that you best is yet to come!  Why is it so difficult for you to believe that? When you look at Rom 8:28 – “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” – haven’t you ever realized that that ‘purpose’ was that vision we’ve been talking about all this month? Perhaps we might rewrite it, “Look if God is working in every aspect of our lives to bring good, realize that ‘good’ is to enable you to enter in to that vision with every day meaning a greater blessing of others by you – that’s ‘the plan’, that was what was there in ‘the vision’ back then before Creation. Awesome!     

27. Your world-changing possibilities (1)

‘Vision’ Meditations No.27: Your world-changing possibilities (1)

Rom 8:22“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

We have already in earlier studies touched on this aspect of ‘vision’, that what we sense of the world and what we feel within us, is that there is yet something better to come.  So we saw a couple of studies back that we are now in the position of having experienced both good and bad and yet, through Christ, have been brought through as knowledgeable children of God, to a better place than even before the Fall, where we know and understand the awfulness of Sin but have now also started out on the journey of salvation knowing forgiveness, cleansing and regeneration and righteousness.

Now imagine time as a long line that we look down on from above, a line which also represents time-space history, the vision that God saw from before the foundation of the world (and also oversees today) which will have a God-decreed end at some point that only He knows (Mt 24:36). Looking down on this line, for us it is somewhat indistinct (especially the future) but we can see ‘the present’, where you and I are today.

Now, although the Sin of the world seems ever clearer and more prominent, we have to ask, what is Jesus doing as he reigns in the midst of his enemies (Psa 110:1,2) and what might he want to be doing TODAY through you and me as he continues to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth?

You see, if we can catch this aerial perspective of time, it helps reinforce this picture we’ve been playing with throughout this month of the vision that God had that saw, not only the freedom of Adam and Eve, the Fall, and the unrolling out of Israel’s history and then the history of the Church from the Day of Pentecost onwards – God saw it all and we catch it through the historical aspects of both the Old and New Testaments and then focus ourselves down onto this time line to today. Now that should do at least two things.

First it helps us realize that our lives are part of the bigger scheme of things that we now see as the vision of the entirety of history, the plan of God that observes all of mankind – including you and me – seeing that our part of history that we refer to as ‘now’ is the result of the outworking of history up until today, the combination of the lives of millions upon millions of people, all contributing to this current end point.    

Second, we may have questionable thoughts about our identity and meaning in life, and we may think that we are only a tiny cog in a massive machine, but if we believe the chaos theory people, and their butterfly effect, that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly on one side of the world, can go to cause a subsequent storm on the other side of the world, then who knows how God will use our actions today to bring about major changes elsewhere. To personalize this, my chunterings on these pages may be read by someone somewhere else in the world, that causes them to do something they had never thought of before, and thus bring about good things for lots of other people. You never know, so don’t write off your ‘butterfly wing flappings’ today.

If you have ever watched time-travel films, you will know that one of the concerns of those going back in time is that they do not do anything that changes that history for we never know how those changes will go on and change the whole of the future. The corollary of this must be that if we were able to jump forward on that timeline, we could see changes that had come about by your small actions today. For instance, just a simple word of encouragement today to someone, might have come at a pivotal point in their life where they had been contemplating suicide, which your words had stopped coming about, so when you look down the timeline, they turned out being the person who made the breakthrough in cancer research and made cancer a thing of the past.  Wow, what a few words could do to change the world!!!! And when you see behind the scenes in heaven, you see that your words were prompted by the Holy Spirit, and you had almost decided against bringing those words of encouragement but did eventually heed Him. Well, I wonder how you are going to change the world today. Warning, you may never get to see its effect until you get to heaven and God lets you look back and see what happened!!!! So don’t be put off; be sensitive to His prompting and who knows how you may impact history!

26. Possibilities of warding off the bad

‘Vision’ Meditations No.26: Possibilities of warding off the bad

Gen 4:7 “if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

If you have ever used a telescope or pair of binoculars you will know that vision is brought into focus by slight adjustments so let’s see if we can do this here. We have been speaking, throughout the bulk of this month, about the Plan of God, that we have been referring to as the vision of God, that He formulated from before Creation and thus ALL of time-space history has been, and continues to be, the working out of that vision.

Just recently we have gone right back to the beginning and have been reflecting on some of the things we find in the early chapters of Genesis.

So we have been looking at some of the finer details about humanity that these early chapters of Genesis reveal to us, all part of that vision that God had before He created anything else. None of this was a surprise to Him, even though it may be to us! We have been examining the need for maturity to come into the human race, both in ‘subduing’ and ‘ruling’, the two things God spoke of at the beginning.

Now in our starter verse this is God intervening to warn Cain about the possibility of sin wrecking his life if he doesn’t take hold of it.  We might suggest that within this we have a micro-explanation about what the Bible is all about. Maturity demands understanding of these things which is why, before God and in the light of the Bible, we may suggest the majority of the world’s population is immature. Let’s consider this some more.

Here are the basic facts that the unbelieving world refuses to accept. Mankind is part of God’s Creation. Because He gave us free will, we have the ability to choose what we will do. At the beginning of the Bible we are told that the mandate that God gave mankind, involved us

(i) taking responsibility for the way we dealt with the world (and the current environmental crisis shows our ignorance and negligence in that respect),

(ii) taking responsibility for the way to respond to God Himself (and multiple man-made religions reveal our folly in this respect with some horrendous things being done in the name of religion) and

(iii) taking responsibility for the way we respond to one another (and ongoing wars and conflicts reveal ever more clearly the arrogance and self-centred concern of dictators, self-seeking politicians, and even dare we admit it, the folly of initially God-anointed church leaders, seen so often in recent years.) 

Each of these batches of mass failures reveal the initial failure to refuse to learn from the truths made so clear in the Bible, that go back, we suggested, to a need to mature in knowledge, understanding and wisdom as revealed from heaven. The challenge to Cain was to take hold of his thinking and stop himself going down a path of destruction, exactly the same challenge to mankind – which we fail to heed at every level, whether it be individually relational, corporately in community, or nationally and internationally as countries.

History – right up to the present moment – continues to present us with living illustrations of these truths. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is one of the latest of ultra-clear demonstrations of evil. Truth is perverted in propaganda and hundreds of thousands of lives are sacrificed at the fearful whim of a dictator and his unrighteous, money-grabbing cohort who have plundered their own nation and demolished lives and buildings of their neighbours. The Barbarians are still at the door, for such behaviour is nothing less than utterly barbaric and inhumane.

But this is what rampant unbelief leads to, again and again. God’s call to rule and subdue is utterly taken out of context and perverted and distorted and a blind unbelieving world thus looks on helplessly. As science and technology ‘develop’ and man’s means of harming man, get ever worse, we wonder just how many more years the Lord will allow us to exercise our ‘free will’? (Is Putin exercising ‘free-will’ or is he driven by fear, on a treadmill of evil he cannot get off, just like Pharaoh in Moses’ day?) Our hopes have to be in God who can wind it all up in a moment and create a new heaven and a new earth, or will He yet intervene yet again in ways we haven’t expected. Watch this space. He knows what He is doing, He saw the vision from before the beginning, and He knows just when He needs to intervene yet again. So be still, in the face of all this, and remember He is God. (Psa 46:10)  

25. More about the nature of ruling

‘Vision’ Meditations No.25: More about the nature of ruling

Gen 1:26 “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule..”

There are some bits and pieces of the reflections we’ve been having in the last couple of studies that we should perhaps take hold of more firmly.

An Immature world: We rarely think about God’s instruction to Adam and Eve to ‘subdue’ the world, but any gardener will tell you that unless you control, maintain, or ‘subdue’ your garden it will run amok. This is not because it is a ‘bad garden’, it is just that plants, trees, bushes, shrubs etc. grow cell by cell, leaf by leaf, trunk by stem, and have the propensity to just keep growing until they overshadow or overgrow everything else around them. A woodsman will tell you that dense woods need coppicing or thinning out to make them grow better, or even that fires need to be let to run freely sometimes in pine forests to aid proper subsequent growth. Thus we see the need to ‘subdue’ the earth (Gen 1:28).

But what is true of vegetation is also true of mankind, we suggested in the previous study: with the growth of population there arises the need for government and law administration.

So we learn from Scripture and from observing the world, that God created this world to be a resource of pleasure for mankind and that would be achieved as we administered the control (or rule) over this world using the various characteristics that were similar to God’s characteristics. Hence originally peace reigned between all living creatures, and at ‘the end’ that will be restored (see Isa 11:6,7).

To regain this, needs using God’s wisdom and insight, growing in knowledge and understanding, learning, developing, caring about God, caring for the world, and caring for one another. If we had obeyed God’s initial command, this would have been the sort of people and sort of world we would have. But we didn’t, the Fall occurred with its consequences (and we suggested that if it hadn’t happened with Satan, it would have happened between conflicting individuals subsequently.)

Thus to ‘subdue’ or maintain the growth of the earth, and the growth of population needs maturity, we have been realising, but the truth was that these first real humans, brought into being by God needed to ‘grow up’ and that means more than just physically, it also means mentally. Now both physical and mental growth occur under pressure so as Adam and Eve ‘worked’ the Garden, their muscles would have built up. As they wondered what to do next and turned to God their levels of language use would have developed, together with their knowledge and understanding.  

Learning about the consequences of the Fall would have actually developed their thinking some more so, as much as it is better not to learn evil by disobedience, they were in reality, more knowledgeable after the Fall than before it; as we said before, at a cost!

But as soon as we started talking about ‘ruling’ and then also about obedience to God, we realize that ruling can be good or bad and so we have the illustration later on in the Bible of the various ‘bad’ kings of both Judah and Israel. A good king is one, like David, with a heart knitted to God’s, who was concerned for things like righteousness (see his many psalms) and justice and caring for the needy. A ‘bad’ king was one who was self centred, godless, lacking integrity, and so on.

The call by God to subdue and rule (Gen 1:28) has to be seen, therefore, in the light of the character or nature of God. Although there are no explanations in those early chapters about how to go about subduing and ruling, they must be understood as coming from a benign, loving, all-wise God whose concern is not only for the individual, but also for the way individuals relate to one another and how subsequently communities (and countries) relate to one another, and the criteria we just gave about good or bad kings are automatically seen as the way they relate to the God who made them.

Thus we see the working out of this initial ‘vision’ of God that we’ve been considering all this month, is all about how mankind may live reflecting the nature of God, AND how to restrain the self-centred, godless impulse that is so often visible. This is what the Law of Moses brought to the life of Israel, even before they entered the Promised Land, and this is what the Holy Spirit brings the new Christian believer when they turn to Christ. Jeremiah understood this when he prophesied, “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Jer 31:33) Coming into relationship with God also means coming into the place where the character or nature of God becomes part of us. And again, here’s the amazing thing: although we are on the wrong side of the Fall and ‘know’ by experience both good and evil, now forgiven through the Cross, empowered by the Spirit, we are incredibly receivers of the life of God and so, in one sense, we’re back in the Garden enjoying God’s presence and the wonder of His world. I wonder how many of us appreciate that latter part?       

24. Venturing into the deep

‘Vision’ Meditations No.24: Venturing into the deep

Gen 2:17 “you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

We perhaps trod some paths yesterday that few have trod before, as we started to look at the sort of beings and the life experienced by Adam and Eve before the Fall. The most important thing about it all, is that it was (as so often occurs) initiated by God. He created a beautiful environment in which they could live, and simply set them targets of controlling the earth, and reproducing to fill the earth. Now we move on looking at God’s one limiting instruction and ponder on just why did He say this, especially when He already knew they would disobey?

I suggested yesterday that in the Bible we find a threefold vision of the possibilities of mankind as viewed from heaven. Our starter verse now was God’s warning to Adam that disobedience, would later be seen to lead to a severing from the life of heaven, i.e. physical and spiritual death. Once Adam and Eve experienced both good and evil and thus ‘knew’ what good and evil meant, the inevitable result would be that physical and spiritual death I’ve just referred to.

Once Sin was experienced, and prevailed, death was inevitable. Now hold on to your seat: Because of Christ’s death on the Cross, you and I can now experience both good and evil AND can live in the river of God’s love and life and so can still live!!!!!

Let’s try and open it up a little more:

Step 1: Before the Fall, an immature couple who just enjoy provision.

Step 2: Fallen – that have sinned, know things have changed, now understand right and wrong in an experiential way, and realize there are consequences to all of our actions, good or bad. It will take several thousand years (perhaps) of human experience to realize that having stepped over that threshold of sinning, there is no way back; they are no longer innocent.

From now on, because they have this thing we call conscience, yes, based on our individual value system (for Israel – the Law), they will be ethically-orientated, if I may put it like that, always aware that there is a higher standard we’re never quite meeting. “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (Rom 3:23) or “everyone falls short of the beauty of God’s plan” (JBP) or “incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us.” (Msg) It doesn’t matter how hard we tried, we were still self-centred, veering towards godlessness, and getting it wrong. That’s the can of worms the Fall opened up.

So wouldn’t it have been easier if God had never told them there was something they shouldn’t do? Yes and no. Yes, God could have kept Satan out of the Garden, but would that have helped? Consider what was going to follow. Adam and Eve would have had children who would have had children and before long there were a lot of people in this relatively small space.

The problem? It is all summed up in the old story of Robin Hood first encountering Little John at a log bridge across a stream. Someone has to give way – but we don’t like giving way. Why should I? Result? Conflict. Sin is still going to arise. All Satan did was bring it earlier in the scheme of things.

Part of mankind’s learning to rule involves learning to subdue and control the earth. Sin is all about exercising self to the exclusion of God. So God steps out of their sphere of activity (they are banned from the Garden – Gen 3:23) and will just be there in the background when they seek Him (e.g., Gen 5:22,24). But in order to manage this world, and maintain peace within growing mankind, they would need God’s wisdom but as we each know that’s a tough lesson to learn! I titled the previous study ‘Created Immature’ because that was how both the world and Adam and Eve were. Yes, they learned the difference between good and evil – a step towards maturity, but unfortunately at a very high cost! Israel would learn how to maintain a relationship with the Lord through the sacrificial system, but the world would have to wait until the coming of the Christ before we saw the full intent of God’s (vision) plan in respect of having a living relationship with Him. These are indeed deep waters to swim in! 

23. Created Immature?

‘Vision’ Meditations No.23: Created Immature?

2 Tim 3:16 “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful…”

Perhaps we could do with a Recap to enable us to see more clearly where we ‘ve come to – seeking for ‘the big picture’.

16: Vision of the days ahead – Col 1:9,10 – God’s will for us is His vision

17: Honesty and that ongoing vision – being realistic about this vision

18: When life goes slow – Rom 15:22,23 – the apparent will of God sometime seems to being hindered

19: The death & resurrection principle – Jn 12:24 The general principle to remind us that both vision and fulfilment has to be of God

20: Forms of Unbelief – Mt 16:22 – struggles to understand and believe God’s vision

21: Pressing Through – the need for faith being released to enable us to believe and live according to the vision

22: Get the ‘big picture’ – Elisha’s ‘more than the material world’.

Staying firmly with ‘vision’, I want to use our starter verse in a way that is somewhat different from the way we usually use it. We usually apply this well-known verse religiously because it goes on to explain spiritual uses of Scripture, but I would like to suggest that, because it is God-inspired, it is in fact useful for teaching a much broader series of issues than we usually think about. i.e. the even bigger picture.

So in this and coming days I want to suggest that, although not filled with as many facts as, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Bible, as a complete book, does in fact, create a vision from heaven’s viewpoint of (i) what mankind were originally designed by God to be, (ii) show how that design was distorted by the Fall, and (iii) how that distorted image or vision can be restored to something even more wonderful than that original design. So get ready to have your mind blown away for the remainder of this month.

Because that sounds a bit way-out for some of us (and we struggle to believe it), I’m going to have to repeat what I’ve just said – the restored end product of the God-vision, formulated from the beginning, that we’ve referred to again and again throughout this month, is better and more wonderful than the first vision of mankind before the Fall.

Forgive me if I only slowly unpack this. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard anyone preach on what it must have been like before the Fall, so let me hazard some guesses from chapters 2 & 3 of Genesis.

i) God seems to have been there in the life of the newly formed couple.

ii) Their life seems to suggest just enjoying the garden (and each other? and God?) probably with a sense or feeling of being cared for as they have done nothing to achieve their present status; it had all just been handed to them on a plate, so to speak.

iii) Their knowledge and experience must have been minimal. Compared to ours today, we must know a million more things (often courtesy of TV or education) than they did.

iv) Perhaps because of that they would have had few worries (if any!)

v) Introducing them to a bigger picture of the world, the Lord brings animals to Adam’s awareness for him to name them. Perhaps His way of getting him to start thinking, “What?” and “Why?” 

vi) It must have been a life of utter stress-free simplicity. Without further provocation from outside, they don’t even seem to be thinking why they should obey God’s initial couple of instructions, they just do (Gen 2:16,17).

vii) They are, putting it most simply, a ‘simple couple of souls’ but if they are to develop and grow and reign wisely over the earth (Gen 1:28) they need to mature. Any gardener will tell you that plant life just grows and without control will just create an impassable jungle (it doesn’t have a will, it just grows, so needs ‘subduing’).

viii) They have much to learn and we only learn when we are prompted to think, reason, rationalize, plan, order etc. etc., so although it seems a fairly idyllic scenario, it is not one particularly conducive the growth in both physical and mental ways.

ix) Perhaps, like the Jerusalem apostles who seemed to rest on their laurels and do little to go out to fulfil the Great Commission until persecution scattered them, so Adam and Eve appeared to do little to exercise Hercule Poirot’s ‘little grey cells’ until provoked by Satan (Gen 3) to think (badly) and exercise their free wills (wrongly). And they were never the same again. Their decisions had consequences. A critical lesson in developing maturity! Perhaps we should stop there for the moment and pick up here in tomorrow’s study.

22. Get the ‘big picture’

Meditations No.22: Get the ‘big picture’

2 Kings 6:16,17 “Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’  And Elisha prayed, ‘Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.”

The big problem with ‘vision’ is that it is very much a faith thing and a spiritual perception thing. Now Paul once wrote about their teaching, saying, “This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.” (1 Cor 2:13) A number of other versions speak about, “spiritual things”, and “spiritual people” implying people who think and operate on a completely different basis to the materialistic thinking of the rest of the world.

As I listen to many modern Christians, it seems to me that they find such concepts utterly alien and would even think it presumptuous to talk in such terms, almost a form of superiority, but in reality it is just the language used by those who have given their lives over to Christ and who have entered into a completely new spiritual dimension, led and taught by the Spirit. It is not presumptuous to talk about being led by the Holy Spirit for that is exactly what the Bible teaches is what the Christian life is supposed to be all about.

Now I give this somewhat long preamble because there are believers (by their own definition) who feel that sometimes they are very much alone in their struggles with life, but that is actually never true. Why can we say that?

Well, first because Jesus is always with us (Heb 13:5b), but then, second, there are indications in Scripture that the angelic host is with us (seen in our starter verses) and then, third, there will be friends/family who know the Lord who will be with you if you learn to share with them.

But the bigger point of this text is that we need to ask the Lord for the ‘big picture’, to understand the real spiritual dynamics of the situation. Read the passage and let the Lord release faith in you.

Elisha the prophet, keeps on telling the king of Israel where the enemy, the king of Aram, is (2 Kings 6:9) and so when the enemy seeks to set an ambush for Israel, Elisha, receiving words of knowledge from God, warns the king of Israel. This upsets the king of Aram and he sets out to capture Elisha who happens to be camped in the town of Dothan (2 Kings 6:13). When Elisha’s servant awakes next morning and goes to walk on the walls of Dothan, he sees the army of Aram surrounding the city and panics and tells Elisha.

But Elisha is a prophet and has the insight of a prophet and responds, “Don’t be afraid. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” The servant looks and sees nothing and so Elisha prays, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.” Elisha has sensed the presence of the army of the Lord and realizes that God is there on his behalf.

Now you can read the rest of the story yourself in 2 Kings 6, but suffice it to say, Elisha and his servant operated in completely different ways, the servant with the materialistic eyes of the world, Elisha with the eyes of a servant of the kingdom of God. The servant thought they were alone, Elisha knew differently. So how about you and me; what sort of vision do we have? When you read Paul in Ephesians 6 talking about spiritual warfare, does it all seem just words to you but with no sense of reality? When we read His word each day and pray, perhaps we should be praying, “Lord, please open my eyes to the spiritual realities of these things I am bringing to you”, so that we may pray with much greater spiritual insight and be open to receiving spiritual guidance – words of knowledge, words of wisdom, words of revelation, words of prophecy, so that we may truly operate on the same spiritual plane that Jesus operates on. Yes? May it be so.

21. Pressing Through

‘Vision’ Meditations No.21: Pressing Through

Ezek 37:3 “The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord… . He asked me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’  I said, ‘Sovereign Lord, you alone know.’”

We need to follow up on yesterday’s potentially unnerving meditation, to possibly help to release faith where we’re struggling with the ‘vision’ we’ve been contemplating, of us being the body of Christ getting ready to step out of the boat in faith, and we’ll start by considering Ezekiel’s vision.

First, Ezekiel is having a Spirit-led and Spirit-inspired vision – “he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley.” Until we open our hearts to the Lord and allow Him to fill us with His Spirit, we will be running on second-best. This is where it’s got to start – HIS empowering, HIS revelation. He’s just looking for hungry and thirsty followers who will keep on asking until they KNOW they have been filled: Such Spirit filling brings joy and releasing. When you are filled, you’ll really know it. Ask and keep on asking is the Biblical instruction (Lk 11:9-13).

Now whereas some visions are pure information, this vision starts with a picture of a valley “full of dry bones” but then it comes with a question that is asked of Ezekiel by the Lord: “can these bones live?” The smart response is “Of course they can Lord, for anything is possible with you,” but Ezekiel is a prophet and although prophets know what the Lord is capable of, they are more concerned with what the Lord’s will is, what HE wants of this situation. Hence Ezekiel’s reply, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”   I like the Easy-to-read version that puts it most simply, “Lord God, only you know the answer to that question.” The Lord is sovereign which means He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise, so He doesn’t need Ezekiel to go giving advice. (How often do we tell the Lord what we want Him to do, or what we think He should do?).

But what follows is even more informative: “Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones and say to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!” (v.4) Ezekiel is being shown a valley of death and now he’s being told to prophesy God’s will to these bones, which he does. He’s being instructed to be part of the potential of God within this valley – to call the bones together into skeletons clothed with skin, which God will then breathe into to make them alive.

But it doesn’t stop there for he’s then told the meaning of the picture and how he is then to prophesy to Israel (v.11-14) the vision being applied to Israel. Note part of the word to Israel: “I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land.” (v.14)

Now to get the full wonder of this, we need to remind ourselves that Ezekiel and Israel are all in Babylon in exile where they no doubt think they have no future, but now God gives them this picture that they are like a valley of dry bones with no hope BUT He will bring life back to them and then restore them to their own land – which of course eventually happens (see 2 Chron 36:22,23). This prophecy is the equivalent to that which Jeremiah also brought (see Jer 29:10-14).

Now how does the Lord want us to apply this? Lesson 1: Be open to the Holy Spirit to give you a vision. Supposing you were praying for an unsaved husband. As you pray for him, ask the Lord to give you a vision (picture) of him being saved, showing you what he can become. Ask the Lord to make that picture real.

Now ask Him to show you any part you may have in bringing that about. There are New Testament grounds for believing that the way to his heart is more open because you are a believer, than if he didn’t have you. And so? So ask the Lord to release faith in you to declare out loud in prayer God’s desire for him to turn to Him, and then, as He releases further faith in you, claim this burning brand be snatched from the fire (read Zech 3:2).

If the Lord saw him, from before the world began, being one of His chosen ones (read Eph 1:4), it is merely a matter of time before this will become a reality here today. You see, as you pray and catch sight of God’s desire for your husband, you move from ‘wishful thinking’ to ‘Spirit-anointed faith’ which becomes part of God’s process to draw him and bring him through. All you’ve got to do, is press on through in your prayers, with God releasing faith in you to become the key to bringing your husband through. You move from demanding from God (which is a good start – Lk 18:1-8) to entering into His revelation and acting in response to that. Go for it!