Into the Fire

We are tested to believe this life isn’t all there is. We know we know Jesus Christ. Our salvation is real. We know we have changed. We remember the transformation whether spectacular, emotional, or a matter of fact experience, we became different when we invited Jesus to take over our lives.

We look at the life and formations around us. If we live in the country or if we live in the city or if we live in the mountains or near the ocean, we see the magnificence of creation. Sensibility demands that primal ooze and chaos cannot possibly be responsible for the supreme intricacies of life on planet earth.

In this present reality we tend to focus on the job, marriage, children, school, and the Lord, hopefully not in that order. We are so earth-based that heaven and the spiritual realm as both our eventual destination and the source of our greatest frustrations and triumphs respectively escape our critical attention.

In this present reality we are naïve enough to think we have major control over our lives. We tend to forget that our days are numbered, and most of us don’t know how many of them we have. The purposes and plans for our lives are not guaranteed to take place over the course of, say, 80 years, and then a disease-free slipping away in our sleep.

Sometimes we think raising our kids, getting them off to school, is the most pressing matter, but we forget that if we neglect or delay their spiritual education, their shots at being equipped to handle the ever-increasing evil in this world will handicap them to the point of missing the necessity of using the power of Jesus Christ to overcome that evil in spiritual battles.

As writers, we work and labor over words and stories with hopes of being published. For whom? For what reason? To glorify the Lord? To deliver the novels the Lord wants us to write? In this present reality what is our true and real motivation to write?

The ultimate reality is that this is a temporary place. The objective while we’re here is to intimately know God through His Son Jesus Christ and then to do what we are told to do by His Holy Spirit. Obedience is the sole and soul objective for our lives: to complete the plans and purposes created for us before we were gleams in our earthly father’s eyes. That obedience inevitably involves sharing Jesus with the lost.

The reality of the spiritual realm is eternal and has been around a lot longer than existence as we know it. The beings that occupy that space are supernatural, smarter, wilier, and not easily impressed with our earthly realities. Most of the time we forget they’re there at all. The evil ones harass us constantly, and we can’t figure out why things can be so difficult. The ministering ones assigned by the Father do more to help us than we realize.

In light of the bigger reality we would be wise to focus the majority of our attention on the things of heaven and the spiritual realm, making sure we are using the power and authority we’ve been entrusted with to walk along that narrow and often difficult road. Salvation is not about just meeting Jesus. It’s about a total surrender to him, a death in the family: ours. We die, He lives in us. The more unwilling we are to die, the more this present reality grows and the spiritual reality fades.

In this present reality we have aging, sorrow, trauma and tragedy, shame, tears, suffering and death. No, not always. Sometimes in this present reality we have great joy, laughter, treasured moments, meaningful projects, some successes of varying kinds. But even those are a result of heavenly extended grace, mercy, and blessing.

In other words this present reality is like a partial shadow of the real thing, a short excursion designed for opportunity. The real reality is the one that intersects with this one and offers a glimpse of eternity both holy and evil.

And in light of that reality the importance of so much of what we do shrinks in comparison.

Father, while I live this day that you’ve given me, help me to be focused on what’s important and valuable to you in the true reality. Lead me in your ways, Lord Jesus, and direct my path, Holy Spirit. As always I’m desperate for you, in the Name of Jesus, Amen.