THOUGHTS ON DEATH AND DYING

Christians, and everyone else, have a terminal disease called mortality. Worldwide, 11,000 people – 264,000 daily – step into either heaven or hell as their permanent choice of habitation. Our life is a breath, as David said.  Wisdom dictates that we consider what awaits us on the other side of this earth-life we sometimes are so enthralled with. God uses suffering and impending death to unchain us from earth-life and set our minds on things above... on what lies beyond the physical.  Many saints live unprepared for death, knowing little if anything about heaven and what their life will be like there. Those who are wise will go to the only reliable source to investigate what’s on the other side of death awaiting them.

In 1952 Florence Chadwick attempted to be the first woman to swim from Catalina Island to mainland California. After 15 hours she gave up exhausted and cold. When she was pulled into the boat accompanying her she discovered she was less than a half mile from her goal. In the misty fog lying on the water she had been unable to see how close she was. She said later at a news conference “I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.” As saints journeying home we need to “see the shore” see our destination... Christ and the place He has prepared for us, the New Earth. When we can envision the place we are going and the life we will have there, the speed-bumps of this life will become pebbles as we draw our energy and strength from our Lord. We need to see the shore! It has been said many times “Life is all about the journey”, but it is likewise, in a very real sense, all about the destination... Heaven! The journey prepares us for the destination, but the destination defines the route we will take. 

WE NEED TO SEE THE SHORE

INFINITE IN ALL OF HIS PERFECTIONS... HOLY IN ALL HIS WAYS...

How we view God is the single most important aspect of our walk of faith, for no religion will ever be greater than its idea of God. In this respect wrong perspectives about God can limit or twist our expectations creating havoc with our faith. And, it is not enough to “follow God” for if we don’t view Him correctly we will have created an idol in our own mind to follow.

We cannot dissect God's nature, embracing some attributes while ignoring others, for it is the total of the sum that defines Him as our God. He is Loving, Holy, Gracious, Just, Good, Merciful, Longsuffering, Truthful, Faithful, Immutable, Wise, Self-existent, Self-sufficient, Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, Sovereign. And, God is infinite in all of His perfections, holy in all His ways: Knowing no boundaries He is without measure. This attribute by definition impacts all of the others. Since God is infinite, everything else about Him must also be infinite, and thus He is holy in all His ways.

Our view of God must capture all He is and not just favorite attributes like love or grace. For example, God is loving and just and abounding in grace: “Whom the Lord loves He chastens and scourges”: His discipline – chastening and scourging -- is grace to us, dispensed in love, a tool of discipleship encouraging us to walk justly before Him along the pathway of transformation. We must study to understand all of God’s attributes and how they interrelate and apply to our life, to view God through the eyes of the Spirit... to mature our view of God. Then we can begin to praise Him in prayer... for who He is!

OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD!

JEALOUS LOVE: THE LOVE OF THE SPIRIT

What leads to strife, discord and feuds, and how do conflicts, quarrels and fighting originate among you? Do they not arise from your sensual desires that are ever warring in your bodily members? You are jealous and covet what others have and your desires go unfulfilled, so you become murderers -- To hate is to murder as far as your hearts are concerned. You burn with envy and anger and are not able to obtain the gratification, the contentment, and the happiness that you seek, so you fight and war.

 You do not have, because you do not ask. Or you do ask God for them and yet fail to receive, because you ask with wrong purpose and evil, selfish motives. Your intention is, when you get what you desire, to spend it in sensual pleasures.

You are like unfaithful wives having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vow to God! Do you not know that being the world’s friend is being God’s enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God.

 Or do you suppose that the Scripture is speaking to no purpose that says, The Spirit whom God has caused to dwell in us yearns over us like a jealous lover with passionate longings? These longings bear witness to the truth that God’s Spirit abides in our divided hearts, striving to be welcome, striving to be loved, striving to guide and direct our life, striving to fulfill His mission to reveal Christ in us -- passionate with jealous envy at any area of our life withheld under the purview of Self.

But God gives us more and more grace... greater grace, the power of the Holy Spirit to meet this evil tendency and all others fully. That is why it is written God sets Himself in battle array against the arrogant and haughty, those whose friendship with the world is more important than godliness. But to the lowly, those who are humble enough to receive it, He gives grace continually, empowering the Holy Spirit to transform their lives.

So be subject to God. Resist the devil -- stand firm against him -- and he will flee from you. Come close to God and He will come close to you. Recognize that you are sinners, get your soiled hands clean; realize that you have been disloyal wavering individuals with divided interests, and purify your hearts of your spiritual adultery.

As you draw near to God be deeply penitent and grieve, even weep over your disloyalty. Let your laughter be turned to grief and your mirth to dejection and heartfelt shame for your sins.

Humble yourselves feeling very insignificant in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you: He will lift you up and make your lives significant. He will clothe you in His awesome grace. (James 4:1-10, Amplified Bible modified)

TRANSFORMING LOVE

AGAPE LOVE

It all begins, I suppose, with “God is love”, the vantage point from which we see God’s heart. Now this is not to say God is an emotion or virtue, the Greek is very clear on that point. God is, as to his nature, loving. This love is not the natural human kind of affection for someone, with varying degrees of tenderness and passion. God’s love is unnatural to the human mind, beyond the capacity of the unaided human heart to know or experience. It will take all one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength just to express God’s love back to Him, and it will surpass one’s love for oneself when expressing this love toward others. The Apostle Paul wrote eloquently about this never failing eternal love in 1 Corinthians 13, the same love our Father expressed toward the world in the “giving” of His only begotten Son, the same love our Savior demonstrated at Golgotha.

From the human perspective God’s love is indescribable with the human tongue, although we attempt to none the less, and scandalous to the natural mind which can neither comprehend nor duplicate it. The Holy Spirit of God moved upon the writers of the New Testament to use the Greek agape/agapao to carry the translation of God’s loving nature to mankind, a word belonging exclusively to the family of God being virtually unknown to writers outside of the New Testament. Agape is a deep word describing a love that is passionate, sacrificial, and unconditional, unconquerable in its disposition to do good, and undefeatable in its kindness, loving by choice... an act of the will. To fulfill one’s joy in the object loved, loving for loves sake without recompense or expectation, is to love as God loves. Agape love is a perfect love... an everlasting love... a relentless love... an unquenchable, insatiable, immeasurable, inexhaustible, irrepressible, irrational, unshakeable, inescapable, unmovable, constantly constant unchanging love. This is what it means to say “God is love.” This is how we are loved by God... indescribable!

And with this understanding of the God kind of love comes the rub: Jesus... God the Son, commands that we love God and other people with this very same agape love. Agape love is not a gift of the Spirit or a ministry gifting for the select few. The command to love given in our Lord’s first and second “Great Commandments” is given to all who follow Him. And one does not get agape love through some divine osmosis resulting from salvation. The dilemma we face is one of opposing natures; the lower carnal nature we were born with is in opposition to the higher spiritual nature of the Godhead. Both natures carry the same virtues, love, joy, peace... and so on, but the reality to which each duplicate virtue is attached in each nature is as different as Jesus is from man, as earth-life is from Eternal-Life. Beyond sharing a name the virtues of the higher spiritual nature of the Godhead bear no resemblance to the virtues of our lower carnal nature. It is a great error to assume the human virtue of love resembles or approaches the agape love of the Godhead... a great error! Our Savior’s love commandments can only be satisfied with agape love produced by the heart of God. The love produced by the carnal heart of man falls far short and simply won’t do. To produce Agape love we need the DNA of God’s nature transplanted in our heart. We need transformation.

God became man for no other purpose then to draw men into Christ... into Himself, to make them little Christ’s; the whole universe was created for this very purpose. Jesus commanded: “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” It is our conformance into the likeness of Christ... our transformation, which is at issue in this command, our spiritual maturation. The “Consuming Fire”, the Love that made the worlds, will never rest... or let us rest, until we are literally perfect, the perfect reflection of our perfect Daddy. God’s purpose is not to torment our natural Self but to kill it. No half measures will do, the whole of Self must die to make way for the spiritual nature of Christ to flourish in us. This is the whole enchilada, the whole of Christianity, the foundation on which Kingdom life is built. It is easy to muddy this up with religious works and doubtful disputations of doctrine, while missing the singular focus of the Godhead: We are to be re-born, re-made, conformed, transformed, renewed, sanctified, crucified, resurrected... in a word, changed. Our lower carnal nature must be swallowed up with the spiritual nature of the Godhead. This metamorphosis is a spiritual process paced by our willingness. As we “will to do His will”, the Holy Spirit is unleashed to work in us, “willing and doing of His good pleasure.” Jesus would explain it this way: “I will give you a new Self instead; in fact, I will give you My-Self. My own will shall become yours.” (C.S. Lewis) And with His will comes His heart... the Father’s heart, His nature... His DNA, and His resurrected life.

The grace to love as God loves comes only through transformation... comes only from beholding His love... soaking in His love... submitting to His Lordship... dying daily to Self and Self’s interests... renewing our mind... setting our minds on things above, all willful, purposeful acts. But our carnal nature... Self, will not die easily: Our desires for the world and this life are strong, our will is weak, and the dying process will at times be painful. God has established the way back to Himself: “Narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.” We must “strive to enter”; the whole journey will be as difficult as the first step, “For we have become partakers of Christ.” God’s grace compels us with difficulties to compel us to Him: God never wastes adversity, but uses it as divine opportunities to work good out of the bad of life, while changing us in the process. Transformation is a piece meal process; every piece of Self offered as a living sacrifice on the Cross of Christ releases a piece of Christ’s nature within. And with the release of the nature of the Godhead comes agape love poured out lavishly in our heart by the Holy Spirit, poured out that it might pour forth as a river of living love to God and to others. This delights our Daddy who is easy to please but hard to satisfy: “You shall be perfect”... it’s a process.                                                                                         

FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST COMPELS US

TRANSCENDENT TRANSFORMATION

(A thorough and dramatic change in nature beyond the normal or physical level)

“For we have become partakers of Christ” (Heb. 3:14). The Christian life is not an imitation of Christ, it is a participation in Christ. Exceedingly great and precious promises have been given to us “that through these we may be partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). We must transcend the natural realm, immersing ourselves in the supernatural nature dwelling within. We must experience the power of this indwelling life, the resurrected Christ-life, and, relinquishing our own Self-life, becoming ever more fully possessed of His divine life. In a word, we desperately need Transformation, the metamorphosis of sin stained spiritual cripples into beacons of radiant light reflecting the holy nature of Christ to a world drowning in sin’s darkness. Transformation is the regenerating life process of “Submit -- Crucify – Renew – Transform”, which completes the sanctification process of the Holy Spirit as the believer grows into Christlikeness. In Transformation we willfully submit to the Lordship of Christ, dying daily to Self and Self’s interests, while willfully setting our minds on things above... renewing our mind to reflect Christ’s mind, all willful, purposeful acts. We all want to be spiritually mature... right? That is our Lord’s summation captured in Matt. 5:48: “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect”, which pretty much sums up the purpose of our redeemed life, since the Fruit of the Spirit and our preordained righteous works are both results of Transformation. So Transformation and spiritual maturity, our perfection, are one and the same, acquired walking the same road with our Lord.

Transformation is itself a result, the product of a renewed mind... the Kingdom mindset, and a crucified life... the Kingdom lifestyle. If we think of these two operations of the Holy Spirit as legs of a frog it is clear why we desperately need both operations active in our life. Frogs without legs drown, and one-legged frogs tend to go in circles, making little if any forward progress. Ditto the Christian “frog” who attempts to set its mind Godward while Self rules, or attempts to crucify Self while maintaining a worldly mindset. When Self rules, it is preoccupied with its love for the world and this life... Self’s interests. When our mind is set on earthly things we are focused on what Self desires... again, Self’s Interests. The goal is to be God ruled, dominated by the Holy Spirit under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, with a mind set on things above, God’s Kingdom plans and purposes... God’s Interests! To access and immerse ourselves in Christ’s supernatural indwelling nature and experience the out flowing power of His resurrected life, something must die, something must be refocused... and someone must be willing.

“I AM CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST...”

“SET YOUR MIND ON THINGS ABOVE...”

THE ABIDING PRESENCE OF GOD

Saint’s, we are a habitation of God, a walking... talking... breathing temple of the God who chooses to indwell the hearts of His children. The Holy Spirit of God Himself, a comforter identical to Jesus, lives within our bodies of flesh, manifesting the Christ-Life within. Christ is within us and we are within Him, baptized into His body, and Christ is in the Father and the Father is in Him... He and God are one, so... we are in God. Picture a glass filled with water then submerged into the ocean. We are the glass... God is the ocean... we are filled and surrounded by God. We don’t need a visitation from God... He is here. We don’t need the Holy Spirit to come... He is here. We don’t need to seek God’s presence... He is ever present. “For in Him we live and move and have our being.” We exist saturated by and surrounded with the presence of God.

In Psalm 139 David ponders the impossibility of separation from God’s omnipresence... wonders at His omniscience... marvels at His omnipotence. Our God is everywhere, knows everything, and has infinite power. Remember the old Invisible Man movies, where the Invisible Man puts clothes on to be seen. It’s just that way with God. He is always present with us and sometimes clothes Himself with our feelings so we can “see” Him. Feelings are a product of our emotions... but God’s abiding presence is an indisputable fact for the born-again, Spirit-filled saint of God. Seeking God’s presence is Old Covenant, but in the New and Better Covenant we acknowledge God’s abiding presence: Whether we feel anything or not... He is with and in us! We should be comforted we are filled and surrounded by such a God. We should be star-struck with awe and wonder that our God chooses to dwell in us. We should rejoice that we are never ever alone... never ever forsaken. The enemy wants to rob us of the peace and joy of dwelling in the presence of God, But God’s presence is our inheritance... our birthright, and we must claim it to walk in it. We should proclaim... by faith, we walk in the abiding presence of God... for we do. God is with us... always with us!

GOD’S PRESENCE IS OUR INHERITANCE...

OUR BIRTHRIGHT...

(1 Cor. 7:19-20; 2 Cor. 6:16; Acts 17:28; Jn. 14:10-11, 20, 23; Jn. 15:4-5; Jn. 17:21, 23; 1 Jn. 4:13, 15; Ps. 139; Eph. 1:13; 4:6; Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:3-4)